No water after winter storms
Millions left without power now in dire need of hydration
AUSTIN: States slammed by winter storms that left millions without power for days have traded one crisis for another: Broken water pipes brought on by record-low temperatures have created a shortage of clean drinking water, shut down airports and left hospitals scrambling.
Texas authorities ordered seven million people – a quarter of the population of the nation’s secondlargest state – to boil tap water before drinking it because low water pressure could have allowed bacteria to seep into the system.
A man died at a healthcare facility when a lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible.
About 260,000 homes and businesses in Tennessee’s largest county, which includes Memphis, were told to boil water because of to water main ruptures and problems at pumping stations.
Memphis International Airport cancelled all incoming and outgoing passenger flights on Friday due to water pressure issues.
And in Jackson, Mississippi, most of the city of about 161,000 had no running water.
Crews pumped water to refill city tanks but faced a shortage of chemicals for treatment because icy roads made it difficult for distributors to deliver them, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said.
“We are dealing with an extreme challenge with getting more water through our distribution system,” Lumumba said.
The city was providing water for flushing toilets and drinking, but residents had to drive to pick it up – leaving elderly and those living on icy roads vulnerable.
Lisa Thomas said her driveway on a hill in Jackson was a sheet of ice.
Her husband, who is on a defibrillator and heart monitor, is running out of his heart medication, with only enough to get him through today because she hasn’t been able to make it to the pharmacy to refill it.
“People are in dire need here,” Thomas said.
The water woes were the latest misery for residents left without heat or electricity for days after ice and snow storms swept through early in the week, forcing utilities from Minnesota to Texas to implement rolling blackouts to ease strained power grids.
Texas’ grid operators said the state’s electrical system returned to normal for the first time since a storm knocked out power to more than four million customers.
Smaller outages remained, but Bill Magness, president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), said the grid now had enough capacity to provide power throughout the entire system.
Gov Greg Abbott ordered an investigation into the failure in the energy capital of the US, while Ercot officials have defended their preparations and the decision to begin forced outages early tomorrow as the grid reached a breaking point.
The storms also left over 330,000 people from Virginia to Louisiana without power. About 71,000 in Oregon on Friday were still enduring a week-long outage following a massive ice and snow storm. — AP