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I’m just going to say it. I’m tired of going through unprecedented times. We’re still in the middle of this pandemic and that felt like it wasn’t even the worst part of last week. For those of you who don’t know, Texas and Louisiana experienced a winter storm like no other last week. I live in Houston and in my almost 33 years of life I’ve never experienced a winter storm like that. You can’t tell me that you don’t believe in climate change after last week. We’ve had “snow” here before, but nothing like that. It not only stuck on the ground for longer than a few hours, but it lasted a few days!
It might have been cute at first, I even saw people outside playing in it and snapping pictures but it brought along something a bit more deadly. Quite a bit of Texas was without power and water for the better part of last week. Water pipes were frozen because of the intense cold weather and ERCOT screwed us all over. Most of Texas is on its own power grid for a few reasons, but one of the main ones being that we didn’t want to worry about federal regulations. The overseers for this grid are supposedly a non-profit corporation that has the majority of its members outside this state. Its leaders are appointed by the Texas governor and there’s a bit of confusion on whether they should be considered a quasi-government entity or not. They’re in charge of distributing power throughout Texas and maintaining the sources (wind turbines, natural gas, etc). Well, profit is king, and corners were cut and our sources weren’t weatherized like they should have been and as a result, the majority of the state lost power for the better part of last week.
My power went out Sunday night and didn’t come back steadily until Thursday. Yes, you read that correctly. I was without constant power for 4 days. Now I have to thank my body because I immediately went into survival mode. I bought some non-perishables last Sunday in preparation for the cold weather, not thinking that my power would go out for days at a time so I did have some food when I was hungry but I wasn’t really. I barely ate and drank anything all last week (which was probably terrible for my metabolism), but it helped for me not really having running water for days either. My appetite came back on Thursday and I’ve been eating a few times each day since, but last week was one for the books.
Once again we banded together as Texans and helped our neighbors. I saw folks chopping firewood for each other, churches like St. John’s Downtown and Fountain of Praise doing water and food distributions, Mattress Mack put on his cape yet again and opened up his Gallery Furniture locations as warming shelters for so many people, Whataburger and HEB stepped up too! But this isn’t new, every time we go through a traumatic event like this we band together as a state to help each other out. And I said traumatic event because that’s what it was, I was still skittish about the power suddenly turning back off well into the weekend and didn’t set the clocks on my stove and microwave in case it did go back out. This is something I’ll definitely be talking to my therapist about this week.
But we’re not out of the woods yet. The boil water notice was officially lifted yesterday but we still have people in the city without water because of busted pipes, my parents being one of them. There’s so much structural damage to homes and businesses and we’re in the rebuilding phase of it all. Please continue to donate if you can, and if you’re looking for stocked grocery stores, donation and volunteer opportunities, hotels, gas stations or even a list of plumbers you can check out this crowd-sourced Google sheet that It’s Not Hou It’s Me shared. They even have a link in their IG bio where you can submit information to be added to the Google sheet.
I also wanted to share a few things with y’all that helped me during this winter crisis. I never stopped working (CRE life!) and spent many days working off my phone and conserving my laptop battery. I would charge all of my devices when we’d get a few hours of consistent power, but these items definitely helped make working last week a whole lot easier.
T-Mobile’s Unlimited Plan – I’ve been with them for well over a decade and might be grandfathered into an old plan, but check out if this is still offered. I have unlimited everything and that definitely helped with tethering data for my laptop last week.
Anker portable power banks – I bought mine back in 2016 and they still work!! I have this lipstick charger and the older model of this larger one and they helped me keep my phone juiced all week.
Halo Bolt Charger – This thing is a beast! You’re able to jumpstart your car, charge your USB devices as well we plug-in devices like fans, cameras, and even laptops into it! One of my friends told me about it and has one and it’s a game-changer! Hurricane season will be starting in a few months (something we Houstonians know very well) and this will definitely come in handy for that. Oh, and it’s on sale for $20 off!
Logitech Bluetooth Keyboard – I’ve had mine for a few years now, and in the past, I’d mainly used it for my iPad, but it came in handy when I needed to send emails from my phone. It runs on AA batteries and you can connect 3 devices to it at once and toggle between them. I highly recommend it.
There’s no way to be 100% prepared for situations like that, but I think these will definitely help.