A fight to survive
WEEK OF PERIL: Most vulnerable face life-threatening crises in freeze
As freezing air engulfed Texas, Ashley and Levi Barnard considered themselves lucky.
On Feb. 12, they had finally brought their new baby home.
Cash was born in December, more than two months early. He weighed less than 3 pounds. He spent the first 70 days of his life fighting to survive in a neonatal intensive care unit in Odessa before doctors let the Barnards take him home.
As the snow approached, the couple weren’t too worried. They’d moved to Midland from Houston for work in September and had already experienced months of West Texas winter.
They had a warm house. Plenty of food. Everything they’d need for the complicated regimen of supplemental oxygen and medical treatments to nurture Cash’s underdeveloped lungs: the suitcase-size air concentrator, which filters and purifies Cash’s air supply. A pulse oximeter, to monitor his oxygen levels. The nebulizer, for the treatments he required every six hours. Gallons of breast milk. A week’s supply of oxygen, just in case.
But just before 2 a.m. Monday morning, a shrill alarm rang through the house. They’d lost power.
A continent-size mass of frigid air had crept south from the Arctic, cutting across the Great Plains and sending temperatures throughout Texas plummeting. Forecasters had warned of a week of cold, but the Barnards thought they knew what to expect.
“We did not think it was going to be that bad,” said Ashley, as Cash gave a quiet cry in her arms.
Neither did practically anyone else in the Lone Star State. As temperatures plunged, Texans cranked up their heat. Demand quickly overwhelmed the power grid, plunging much of the state into darkness.
In tens of thousands of homes, pipes froze, then burst. The lack of power left millions huddling in misery, desperately trying to get warm. But for thousands of medically fragile Texans, power outages became a matter of life and death.
Premature newborns such as Cash need electricity to power their oxygen machines. Many special needs children require machines to help regulate breathing, swallowing and regulating their temperature. And thousands more Houstonians rely on regular treatments such as dialysis or supplemental oxygen to stay healthy or treat chronic, lifethreatening conditions.
The Cheeverses
Caroline Cheevers knows what it takes to keep her children alive. She and her husband, Stan, have four children with serious special needs: Tyler, 12, Hailey, 10, Justin, 10, and Ava, 7.
The couple moved to Houston in 2007 and adopted the children after serving as foster parents to another special needs boy.
All four have suffered prior abuse or have genetic conditions, and use ventilators to help them breathe. They all need help with bodily functions including receiving nutrition, swallowing or regulating body temperature.
Caroline, 47, and Stan, 45, started getting ready for the storm.
They called the nursing provider to make sure they’d have help. They stockpiled food and water. They made sure they had plenty of batteries for their lanterns. Caroline had extra batteries for the ventilators, gas in the van, piles of blankets and a week of the vital prescriptions that help keep the kids healthy.
The plan was simple: Stan would stay at home with Hailey, Justin and Ava. Caroline would stay at Texas Children’s Hospital with Tyler, who’d been there since January with a bladder infection.
At the family’s Meyerland home, Stan had everything under control with Hailey, Justin and Ava. While power cratered across the state, the lights stayed on in Meyerland all day Monday.
“Everyone seemed safe,” Caroline said.
She was sitting in Tyler’s hospital room hours later, however, when her phone lit up.
They’d lost power, Stan said. And a pipe had burst, sending water spewing throughout their home on Willowbend Boulevard. The temperature was dropping fast.
Panic tugged at her. Hailey suffers from shaken baby syndrome and can’t regulate her own body temperature. If her body got too cold, her blood pressure would crash, her breathing would slow and she would become nonresponsive.
Caroline worried Hailey was going to end up in the emergency room, or worse. She and Stan began looking for a place to take the children.
But all their friends had lost power. The hotels were booked. And because of COVID-19, Texas Children’s couldn’t let them bring Hailey up to Tyler’s room.
“There was nowhere to go,” Caroline said.
Ronald Waynes
When Ronald Waynes saw the forecast, he wasn’t particularly worried. The New Jersey native had been through plenty of snowstorms. A couple of inches of snow didn’t sound like it would stop him from making his regular dialysis appointments.
But as the temperatures dropped, the Conroe man didn’t see road crews salting the streets or applying de-icer like they would have back home.
Waynes, 56, is one of some 54,000 Texans with kidney disease — and one of 12,000 in the Houston region — the result of a lifelong struggle with high blood pressure, which began when he was just 12. Waynes, who is now disabled, spent 14 years working at Men’s Wearhouse.
Three times a week, he wakes at 3:30 a.m., makes breakfast then drives with his wife, Kimberly, to a clinic for a four-hour dialysis treatment. The process, which filters toxins from his blood, requires electricity and dozens of gallons of water per treatment.
With the storm approaching, Waynes went to his clinic Sunday then went home to wait out the storm.
At first, the power seemed to be holding. But on Monday, as he was loading the washing machine with laundry, the room went dark.
The dialysis clinic called on Tuesday. The facility’s pipes had burst, so his Wednesday appointment was off. They’d call with more information when they could.
When patients such as Waynes can’t get dialysis, their bodies swell with fluid and toxins fill their blood. Breathing gets more difficult, and as the condition worsens, it can make patients’ hearts stop.
Waynes wasn’t alone, said Tiffany Jones-Smith, CEO of the Texas Kidney Foundation.
During the height of the storm, power failures and burst pipes knocked about half of the 750 dialysis clinics across Texas offline, she said. The network collapsed like “a house of cards.” Without power or water, the clinics were unable to function.
“You don’t realize how fragile the system is until something goes markedly wrong,” Jones Smith said.
Waynes waited as the hours ticked by, hoping the power would come back on. That evening, he and Kimberly decided it was time to leave.
They packed their two Jack Russell terriers, Dog and Ginger, bundled into their car and headed to his sister’s home in The Woodlands. She still had power, at least.
That’s when he started to worry. The roads looked like a “sheet of ice.”
“People here don’t have respect for the ice,” he said.
But as the hours passed, the pressure on his chest gradually increased. He tried to drink as little water as possible — that’s what would send his kidneys into overload — but breathing became harder and harder.
The Barnards
In Midland, the squealing alarm that jerked Levi Barnard awake early Monday morning — and sent his adrenaline spiking — was from Cash’s air concentrator. Working properly, the machine released a puff of air every few seconds. With its power supply cut off, it sent out a shrill warning.
He and Ashley rushed to Cash, switching his air supply from the concentrator to their reserves of bottled oxygen. The pulse oximeter had a battery — but it died just a couple hours later.
He fired off a text to friends soon after.
“Cash’s monitor is dead now,” he wrote. “We can’t see his pulse ox or HR, so I’m sitting here with my cell flashlight staring at him.”
Days before, they’d called Direct Energy to make sure they were registered as critical customers. But the power company had told them they’d need to wait for a form to arrive in the mail, which they’d have to fax elsewhere.
Now, Levi had to figure out how to keep Cash warm and breathing.
He scrolled through every Midland-area hardware store and farm supply store website he could, looking for places to buy generators. Finally, just before 6 a.m., he grabbed his car keys and headed to the Home Depot a few miles away.
There was one left, a garish yellow Ryobi generator, stuck on the shelf with anti-theft wires. He stood by the generator, hand on the machine, yelling for an employee to come help.
“I’m a passive person,” he said. “But I was already preparing myself for a physical altercation if needed. I felt I was having to save my son’s life.”
The Cheeverses
Caroline and Stan Cheevers made a decision.
Hotels were full. Friends didn’t have power. Because of COVID and the kids’ fragile medical conditions, crowded warming centers such as the George R. Brown Convention Center weren’t an option.
But Texas Children’s had called: It was opening up a tower for technology-dependent children. There was a spot for Hailey if the Cheeverses could get her to the hospital, which has cared for more than 11,000 medically fragile children over the past year.
It was time to split the kids up. A close family friend drove to their home to pick up Ava and Justin. Caroline would have to stay at Texas Children’s with Tyler. Stan would bring Hailey there as well.
Stan packed a large duffel bag, with Hailey’s medicine, diapers, formula and other critical supplies, then wheeled her into the family’s van.
They arrived at the hospital just before 1 p.m. Tuesday. Hailey’s temperature had already fallen a few degrees.
On Wednesday, the tower where she and Tyler were staying lost water. On Thursday, the power failed, forcing generators to kick on.
Her two other children, meanwhile, stayed with a family friend. They were confused, but they were with someone they knew.
After it all, Caroline breathed a sigh of relief.
She can’t stop thinking just how close the situation came to being “a huge catastrophe.” She can’t stop thinking about the bitter cold. The burst pipes. About what would have happened if she couldn’t keep the kids warm.
During Hurricane Harvey, the problem was too much heat. But even without power, she could at least cool the kids off.
“This was 100 times worse,” she said. “There are only so many layers you can put on a child that can’t move.”
Ronald Waynes
By Wednesday morning, the pain was too much. Ronald Waynes’ brother-in-law dropped him off at the emergency room at Houston Methodist Hospital-The Woodlands.
He tried not to worry too much — something he’s learned from a lifetime of serious health problems. But he was worried about his wife, Kimberly, and his dogs.
At the hospital, he had to go in alone because of COVID restrictions.
Doctors performed a stress test, then moved him upstairs to begin dialysis. He got about 1½ hours through the treatment before blood clots forced them to stop.
They tried again on Thursday, with the same problems. The doctors wanted him to visit a specialist in Houston to figure out what was causing the issue. But he was stuck for now.
“I can’t leave here till this works,” he said.
He is looking forward to going home. To his routine. To evenings with Kimberly, and walking Dog and Ginger.
The Barnards
Levi Barnard raced out of the Home Depot with the generator he’d bought Monday morning. At home, Ashley was waiting in the dark with Cash and his 18-monthold brother, Wells.
She was starting to worry. What would she do if Levi’s car wouldn’t start? What would she do if he lost control on the icy roads? How would she carry Cash, with all his wires and equipment, and Wells?
Levi was so focused on Cash that he didn’t have time to be worried about the driving. And the ranch house was getting cold.
He plugged in Cash’s pulse oximeter first, to make sure the baby was getting enough oxygen. With power, he was also able to turn on the gas-powered fireplace in the living room. A friend texted, checking up on him.
“Just keeping everyone alive,” he replied. “Barely.”
He used gas from his lawnmower to power the generator but soon realized he would need much more.
He took Wells, and they headed out to look for more. They traveled 20 miles — to “at least 15” gas stations — before they found one that had fuel. Even then, it was 45 minutes in line before he could fill their gas can.
The lights came on for a few hours later that night, enough time to get the central heat going to try to warm the house. It was just long enough that Levi thought the worst might be over, and he decided to turn off the generator.
About 10:30 p.m., they lost power again, alarms once again filling the house. Levi vowed to keep the generator running until he could trust the grid wouldn’t fail again. But his gas can could hold only a few gallons of gas. On Wednesday morning, he went back to Home Depot.
A few minutes later, he sent Ashley a text. They were in luck.
“Gas cans at HD!” he wrote. “2 Gal, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
They would spend the next day camped out in their living room by the white fireplace, trying to stay warm and preserve power.
On Thursday, he woke up and noticed that the microwave hadn’t reset — they’d gone the whole night without losing electricity. That morning, he bundled Ashley, Wells and Cash into his SUV and headed to the doctor, for Cash’s first post-hospital appointment with a pediatrician.
Everything they heard was as expected. The infant had significant challenges ahead, but nothing out of the ordinary or made worse by the storm.
When they returned from the doctor’s appointment, Levi wrapped up the extension cords after finally disconnecting the generator.
“You don’t realize how fragile the system is until something goes markedly wrong.”
Tiffany Jones-Smith, CEO of the Texas Kidney Foundation, after dialysis clinics went offline during the outages