This winters' infrastructure catastrophe in Texas

[Aribeth Zelin]

Please remember that close to half the state is blue. The problem is the Rs have gerrymandered and cheated their way to total power, and do not reflect the will of millions.

Sounds like Florida, even though we have an amendment forbidding it.

 

[Pamela]

After 2.5 days with no power in Austin (and I live on the “diverse” side of 35), it finally came on at midnight. After days of no phone service, back this morning. Still no running water, still have to boil what we have. If not for gas, we would have just frozen. I did have plenty of pandemic emergency backup food, I couldn’t recharge anything or listen to radio in the car because it is in the garage behind a powerless garage door.

All very stone age.

I am not the only Texan enraged by our criminally incompetent state govt officials, don’t get me started.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Pamela]

As much as anyone here may loathe Ted Cruz, if he were your senator you would do so exponentially more.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I don't know how this thread appears to the Texans here

 

[Pamela]

And we are so sick of it. Just think, we could have had Beto.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

And we are so sick of it. Just think, we could have had Beto.

I think the problem isn't entirely that... but that too many progressives are purists, and too many centrist Dems take progressives and POC and LGBTQIA+ and even women voters for granted.

It needs to stop. We really need to engage the people to get them to vote, as well as keeping the gop from stealing away the people's right to vote.

 

[Beebo Brink]

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

And we are so sick of it. Just think, we could have had Beto.

Seriously. Check out Beto's feed during this crisis. No politicking, no finger-pointing, no blaming communists or flying to Mexico. Right now his job is to help and he's doing everything he can.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

lol this f'n guy

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

I hope this means he's gotten his power back.

 

[Soen Eber]

As much as anyone here may loathe Ted Cruz, if he were your senator you would do so exponentially more.

I guess if I were a father of some means and had teens I would also fly them to Mexico. Grab the wife or sister or a responsible female adult as chaperone, hand them a credit card, tell them to "have more fun than I'm having", and then promptly return to the business at hand (which I hope in his case would be dealing with the emergency as best as he is capable of).

 

[Free]

Texas was minutes away from monthslong power outages, officials say

Officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas said that grid operators implemented blackouts to avoid a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months.

www.texastribune.org

Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday.

As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worse-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.

The quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts — but lasted days for millions of Texans — occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid.

 

[danielravennest]

In Texas' case, the thinking has been that they don't want to participate in any outside generating pool because it would bring Federal regulation. The same regulation that might have prevented the mess they're in right now.

It's not just that. The US as a whole has 2.3 times as much power plant capacity as needed to meet average demand. The reasons are to meet daily and seasonal peak demand *and* to cover plants that are out of service. *Every* power plant of *every* kind is out of service sometimes. Nuclear plants need refueling, hydroelectric has droughts sometimes, coal and natural gas need maintenance, etc. So you want that extra margin to cover outages.

By cutting themselves off from the national grids, they couldn't import power from unaffected regions who had spare capacity. So the people of Texas got screwed.

 

[danielravennest]

THREAD!

If there isn't a can opener on their Swiss Army Knives or Leatherman multitool, then yes, they are morons.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

If there isn't a can opener on their Swiss Army Knives or Leatherman multitool, then yes, they are morons.

Oh the tools are there, they just don't know how to use them without hurting themselves, much less stitch their own wounds.

 

[Pamela]

I am so sick of hearing what rugged individualists we are. No, Rick Perry, you idiot, we would not rather freeze in our homes or die in any other way rather than accept help from feds.

We are all for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps as long as we have boots.

 

[Essence Lumin]

We are all for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps as long as we have boots.

That phrase started with its opposite meaning.

The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” originated shortly before the turn of the 20th century. It’s attributed to a late-1800s physics schoolbook that contained the example question “Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps?”

So when it became a colloquial phrase referring to socioeconomic advancement shortly thereafter, it was meant to be sarcastic, or to suggest that it was an impossible accomplishment.

The Origins of the Phrase “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps”

The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” originated shortly before the turn of the 20th century. One of the first recorded instances of the concept is in an 1888 physics schoolbook Popular …

uselessetymology.com

 

[Jolene Benoir]

After 2.5 days with no power in Austin (and I live on the “diverse” side of 35), it finally came on at midnight. After days of no phone service, back this morning. Still no running water, still have to boil what we have. If not for gas, we would have just frozen. I did have plenty of pandemic emergency backup food, I couldn’t recharge anything or listen to radio in the car because it is in the garage behind a powerless garage door.

All very stone age.

I am not the only Texan enraged by our criminally incompetent state govt officials, don’t get me started.

Yeah, my aunt went 33 hrs without power, got it back for 5, then went another 34 without. She lives in SW Austin only two miles from my cousin who got and kept her power back after the first 33. She came and got my aunt to stay overnight. My aunt's apartment complex has no water, collapsing ceilings in some apts and community buildings. She has an electric stove so had to make do and didn't have the option to boil water.

This is ridiculous and that mayor makes me irate as well as the greed which underlies why this had to be worse than just a normal weather pattern. People pay for their utilities. There is absolutely no excuse for being such an evil person as telling people to figure it all out themselves and suddenly expecting them to become Grizzly Adams in the middle of a major metropolitan area.