The situation in Texas isn’t a joke.

by dpow

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Sorry for the long post, but people are really starting to piss me off, and I feel obligated to go on a bit of a rant here.
I see that there are quite a few people on GLP that are telling Texans “Suck it up wimps! It’s just a little cold! You would never last a day up here in the north!”
Well, I lived in Michigan from the time I was born until I was 54 years old, and I just moved to Texas a few years ago. I’ve lived through the Michigan blizzards of 1977, 1980, 1993, and so on, but the conditions that we are experiencing right now in Texas doesn’t compare to anything that I’ve ever experienced up north.
We have several million Texas residents who have been freezing in their homes for several days now without any electricity. Most of the hotels don’t have electricity either, and the few that do are completely booked up. Up north we never lost power for more than a few hours, and the roads were always plowed and salted if you needed to go somewhere for help. But down south, even if the roads were treated, it wouldn’t matter because almost everything is closed anyway, including most of the grocery stores.
Most homes have had their pipes bust because the waterlines aren’t designed for this type of weather. I live in an area that is surrounded by quite a few senior living communities, and most of them are without power right now. The cities aren’t designed to handle these types of conditions, because the last time that weather conditions were this bad in Texas was back in the 1800’s. So there aren’t very many good options right now for millions of families in Texas.
My sister, and her family of ten, recently moved from Boston to Fort Worth. They have been without power for almost 3 days now and have been huddled around their living room fireplace this entire time. I’m not sure what they would have done if they didn’t have a fireplace. They thought that they had a lifetime supply of firewood, but it’s almost gone already, and they are taking turns using the car to charge their phones. My sister says that she has never experienced anything like this in all the years that she lived in Boston. My nephew’s girlfriend was supposed to fly back to Boston yesterday, but most of the flights at DFW are canceled, so she as no idea when she will be able to go back.
So I know that all of this might seem like a big joke to people up north. It’s not as simple as putting on a sweater and driving slower. That works fine up north, but it doesn’t work that way in the south. As someone who has spent most of their life up north, I can promise you that this isn’t a joke. It’s a completely different type of situation when your living in a state where the infrastructure isn’t designed for long periods of freezing weather.

 

 

 

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