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Nearly 1.2 million people in the Houston area were without power on Monday, Mayor Sylvester Turner said, as demand for electricity rose amid record cold temperatures across Texas.
Turner urged those who still have electricity to save energy by lowering thermostats so that the power grid is not overwhelmed. Utility companies, including Centerpoint in the Houston area, have shut off power in some areas to reduce usage.
“In order to avoid a statewide blackout, which could take several days or even a week or two to restore, the system has to be very surgical to remove people from the system to reduce that demand on this limited supply, ”Turner mentioned. “Otherwise it could be much worse and this situation could continue.”
The Bush Intercontinental Airport weather station recorded an air temperature of 17 degrees on Monday morning, the lowest reading since 1989.
Centerpoint said residents without power shouldn’t expect service to be restored until Tuesday at the earliest, leaving families with bad options to choose from: resting with layers of blankets or crossing icy roads to houses of friends and relatives with electricity.
Spring Branch’s Michele Whitebread said she wasn’t eager to drive several miles to her parents’ house, but planned to do so with her husband and five children on Monday afternoon, after having lost power at 5 am. Staying put and bundling up would have been an option. , she said, if not for her youngest daughter, Maggie, who was born just four weeks ago.
“My parents have the power and we don’t,” Whitebread said. “The house cannot be too cold with the newborn baby.”
A failing fire alarm woke Jared Berry in his northwest Harris County home around 2 a.m. when he lost power. His wife’s humidifier was also off.
A few hours later, after putting on thermal underwear, he used a meat thermometer to see how cold his house was. The aircraft stopped at 58 degrees.
“We were able to boil water and brew a cup of coffee in our French press,” Berry said.
Running water was not available to Jamie Rangel at his apartment in West Houston, along Interstate 10 and near Silbur Road. His power died out around the same time.
“It’s just me. I have a lot of bottled water to drink,” Rangel said, expressing a lack of concern.
He plans to get rid of the cold sandwiches until the power comes back on.
Ryan Sullivan spent his morning cuddled in a duvet as the temperature continuously dropped inside his Spring Branch home. He wished he had planned better.
“Honestly, we didn’t prepare well for this. I should have bought groceries that I could cook without a stove, ”Sullivan said. “I didn’t expect to lose power for the rest of the day.”
As the temperature inside reached 45 degrees, he considered using a fancy s’mores burner to cook food for his girlfriend and roommate.
Arwen Mallet’s two children come and go to play in the snow. The joy is fading, she explained.
“I try to discourage them from going out because it’s too hard to warm them up afterwards,” Mallet said.
His family’s home lost power around 3 a.m. near Memorial City Mall, just north of Interstate 10.
Each hour that passes without electricity is more worrying than the last.
“You start to feel a little more worried about it,” she continued.
In the Northside neighborhood, Deidre Thomas plans to stay curled up and bundled up. She won’t go to her office – which still has power – like her colleagues do.
“It’s not ideal, but I find it more terrifying to take the road to go somewhere than to stay put,” she said.
In Galveston, Danny Hanley and his wife, Karen, spent the morning without electricity in their raised beach house – hardly an ideal shelter for subzero temperatures.
“They don’t insulate these houses very well,” Hanley.
To stay warm, he pulled on extra layers of clothing and ventured out to watch the elderly neighbors.
“People are a little scared,” he says. “They would ask, ‘When is the power back on? I didn’t know what to tell them.
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