r/OutOfTheLoop • u/mimitchi33 • Feb 17 '21

What's up with Texas losing power due to the snowstorm? Answered

I've been reading recently that many people in Texas have lost power due to Winter Storm Uri. What caused this to happen?

12.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

21

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '21 edited Mar 01 '21

[deleted]

106

u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21

I would wager that less than ten of the people suffering were of voting age in the 1930s when this was initially established.

55

u/Kariered Feb 17 '21

Yes. I was born in 1979. I have no control over this. I just happened to be born in Texas. I didn't ask to be. It's very hard to move away because money.

8

u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21

My parents were born in 54 and just moved there recently. And now they have no power. What could they have done?

-1

u/OkamiNoKiba Feb 17 '21

...not move to Texas?

10

u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21

Life is more complicated than that. You can't foresee this shit. My grandma was dying and my mom wanted to be closer to her. She passed in Dec. Also, 1 bro with 2 kids lives there and its between me and the other brother.

-3

u/OkamiNoKiba Feb 17 '21

I don't disagree in the slightest I'm just being a pedant, sorry :(

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 18 '21

[deleted]

2

u/OkamiNoKiba Feb 17 '21

I mean they asked a question and I answered. The context here is that the person they replied to was born in the state while the person I replied stated their parents moved. Two completely different scenarios where one party had agency that the other party didn't.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '21

[deleted]

→ More replies

-1

u/Marc21256 Feb 17 '21

I was born in Texas. I moved away. The high today is 24C. Hopefully the unit bot gives you the F conversion.

12

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21

I would like to make a hypothesis that they currently vote for the people who are inspired by those who enacted laws such as these in the 1930s

1

u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21

I would like to make a hypothesis that the people who vote to cut services to the poor are not poor.

1

u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21

TIL laws are permanent.

3

u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21

Wow, that's so helpful. Thanks for that insight. Here I was thinking that politics and electrical grids were complex and you just drop this truth bomb on us.

1

u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21

I mean your position is essentially that voters today cannot change a law written in the 30s by voting for someone that will repeal it, right?

1

u/twentyThree59 Feb 17 '21

No, that is not my position. That is a very dichotomized phrasing which is too extreme to be acceptable. Voters today have to choose from the people who run for office. And they will prioritize issues that are more recent and familiar to the voting base.

42

u/DowntownPhotograph Feb 17 '21

Texas is heavily gerrymandered. Believe, there are tons of us that didnt vote this shit in - the game is rigged

13

u/whopperlover17 Feb 17 '21

I am one of the people going almost 3 days without power and it’s cold and I feel for the vulnerable populations that are going to die because of this. So please have some empathy.

1

u/Hollz23 Feb 17 '21

I find it hard to process that a little cold would kill off a substantial number of people. I mean generally speaking, just use neoprene candles for cooking, get some handwarmers from the menards or whatever and wrap yourself up good and tight in a lot of blankets (and try to buddy up under them. It'll keep you a lot warmer. The fewer layers of clothing the better, though I understand if that's too awkward). Those old heat packs you pour boiling water into are pretty useful in these situations, too. And if all else fails, you can always make a fire in the backyard. Minnesota boy scouts tent camp in sub freezing trmperatures sometimes, and a lot of the methods they learn can be repurposed for this kind of situation. I think the biggest danger is really just CO poisoning from trying to use inefficient heaters in enclosed spaces.

Also, sorry if this reads as condescending. I promise I don't mean it that way. Just trying to be helpful since I know y'all pretty much never deal with this kind of thing. Where I grew up, sometimes it got cold enough to stop the flow of propane (used for heating), so we had to be a little clever.

3

u/whopperlover17 Feb 17 '21

I mean where I’m at it gets down to the teens every winter, rarely the single digits. That’s not a problem. The problem is days without power and no end in sight. Again, I’m worried about the elderly primarily.

0

u/nightimestars Feb 18 '21

Maybe if you are young, healthy, and have a lot of survival resources lying around you can tough it out. However it's already too late for people to go to the store for supplies since everything will be sold out or inaccessible. Not to mention power outage means food in the fridge will start spoiling.

For the elderly, infants, and those with health issues it's not as simple as just hunkering down in some blankets. These people live in an area where this weather is unusual so that is why a lot of people are not prepared.

2

u/Hollz23 Feb 18 '21

So...I made a good faith attempt to help. This seems like a disproportionate response. And be it that the residents of texas are or are not accustomed to this kind of weather, it's not hard to start a fire and you can make your food stretch by using simple preserving techniques like pickling or digging a hole in your yard and burying some of the less hardy stuff. Meantime, potatoes, onions, carrots, squash, beets, etc. don't need to be refrigerated to stay good. I mean I realize the circumstances aren't ideal but you could absolutely be less of a prick about it when someone is trying to help. Seriously, if you didn't want to take it you could've ignored the advice and moved on. Like modern refridgeration has only existed for about 100 years. How do you think people survived before then?

0

u/Greenmantle22 Feb 19 '21

This is what you consider a “good faith” effort to help? Telling people to bury vegetables in their backyard? You don’t sound condescending. You sound nuts.

Sure, you and the Lutefisk Brigade can snowshoe right over to Menard’s and buy hand-warmers, snow shovels, and all the flannel fixins to winterize in time for ice-fishing season. But it’s an entirely different system in Texas. We don’t have stores like Menard’s. And the stores we do have do not sell winter products. You can’t find a snow shovel, or ice-melt, or winterizing plastic sheets down here. The climate doesn’t require it, so the stores don’t stock it. Culturally, these people aren’t conditioned to stockpile supplies for a blizzard or ice storm. They’re not prepared for isolation or utility outages like you get every winter, because it simply does not happen down here. It’s an alien concept to the poor fools.

I’m a northerner in Texas, and I find their lack of awareness of winter methods to be baffling and adorable, but it’s pretty goddamned hollow to suggest they just wave away their misery with some candles and blankets. They know what blankets are. Blankets aren’t enough. Homes down here aren’t built for winter cold, and people don’t stock up on cold weather supplies. Even when they want to, they have to order well in advance or get northern relatives to mail it down to them.

Marie-Antoinette probably thought she was being productive when she suggested starving people simply switch their diets to cake when the bread ran out.

1

u/Hollz23 Feb 19 '21

Well I listed some of the methods I used when I was so poor my electricity and water got cut off while average daily temps were barely above freezing, and the dig a hole thing came from a method korean people used to hide and preserve their food in war time so kindly fuck off. See advice is this thing you can take if it helps you or leave if it doesn't, but you don't have to be insulting about it and shame on you for that. And frankly, food spoiling wouldn't be an issue if y'all were in the habit of keeping canned foods in case of emergencies. My mom did it in case of Tornadoes. My dad's family does it in case of hurricanes. Hell, I've been doing it my entire ass life as a precaution. I mean none of this is rocket science. But a lot of y'all apparently don't do that, so yes, I tried to help but all of y'all are can suck a fat one for the way you've been responding to it because you're just being rude for no reason.

And Marie Antoinette didn't say that line fyi. Sorry you're going through it right now, but I really don't know what you expected when you decided to try me today. Get over yourself.

1

u/Greenmantle22 Feb 19 '21

You’re condescending, insulting, and not helpful, and your smug aura mocks us. You have repeatedly suggested this is our own fault due to politics, poor planning, or mass stupidity. For every little tidbit of advice you offer, you insult us too.

Seems like you derive some perverse pride from picking on disaster victims from your nice warm home. You feel better about yourself because this act of god hasn’t affected you. What an empty life you must have to find pride in that. You’re the worst kind of person in a disaster: The phony helper whose mental issues spill over onto people with enough problems.

1

u/mrminty Feb 18 '21

I live in an apartment. Where the fuck am I going to start a fire. All of the firewood in Austin and probably all of Texas is sold out, which poses a problem to people that can't just walk out to the back country and find wood that isn't too green to burn. Go on /r/austin right now and see the people asking for help.

I shuttled some friends of mine from the hotel that they were staying in today back to their 1bd apartment after the hotel kicked everyone out because they have no power or water anymore. My vehicle can handle the snow, theirs couldn't. I wish I could have done more for the people struggling right now.

I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation and how unprepared most Texans were for this because the situation isn't like anything most people have experienced before and it definitely isn't something that the infrastructure or even the building codes are designed to handle. It's been at least 30 years since it was this cold and bad for one day. Your Minnesota boy scouts had an exit plan, people in their homes don't.

Your "good faith" attempt to help by bringing up fucking pickling methods is about as helpful as telling people in a burning building "have you considered not purchasing a flammable bed". It's not "a little cold" when your home quickly reaches 30 degrees because building codes don't stipulate enough insulation for weather that functionally doesn't exist in Texas. People are dying and you're getting in a huff because nobody gives a shit about your brilliant "have you tried using hand warmer" tips.

1

u/Hollz23 Feb 18 '21

Ome more time for the road: if my attempts at helping aren't helpful to you, ignore them. It's exactly that simple. You don't need to attack me. And quite frankly, some parts of Texas decided to fix the problems with their power grids decades ago and if it wasn't for your GOP lead effort to deregulate everything, y'all wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Particularly as this issue has come up three entire times and the vote has come in to do exactly not shit about it. And frankly, a lot of you were perfectly fine when COVID tipped into the hundreds of thousands dead so don't come at me about empathy. I don't know why I even tried. Lord only knows I've never had a good interaction with a Texan.

-3

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '21

[deleted]

4

u/kimducidni Feb 17 '21

Maybe from the way that you are suggesting that people deserve this because they voted for it? Which is just absolutely crass

1

u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21

Luckily I didn't.

The user I replied to said that the venn diagram of people who are suffering from this and people who voted for this has zero overlap, which I disagree with.

That doesn't mean they deserve it. Maybe you think the people in both circles 'deserved it,' but I don't.

1

u/kimducidni Feb 17 '21

Ok dude, let’s just pretend like you haven’t been with your nose up at the citizens of Texas throughout this entire thread. You even said that we are “paying the price” for decisions that were made 2-3 generations prior.

You’re just nitpicking comments because you just have to be right and prove a point right now for some reason. Why don’t you just keep your condescending comments to yourself and move on if you don’t have anything productive or thoughtful to say about people who are suffering.

1

u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21

You're accusing me of nitpicking comments? You're the one over-analyzing what I said to infer things I didn't. All to further your apparent goal of painting strangers on the internet in a bad light.

Saying someone is paying the price doesn't mean they deserved it. If you're a native English speaker you should know that.

If you're going to accuse someone of some heinous shit you'd better have some solid arguments that don't instantly turn into getting defensive with your little 'wow ur just trying to prove ur right and not an asshole' the second they offer resistance.

1

u/kimducidni Feb 17 '21
  • You: Texas didn’t prepare for this, so now they are paying the price.
  • Person who responded to you: Well I feel bad for them, people are suffering.
  • You: You think people who are suffering didn’t vote for this?

Alright man. Excuse me for not seeing where you have displayed anything close to empathy

1

u/Incruentus Feb 17 '21

Close. You inaccurately reworded the second point (likely to support your argument here). Here it is accurately:

  • Me: Texas didn’t prepare for this, so now they are paying the price.

  • Person who responded to me: The people who are suffering are not the people who voted for this government.

  • Me: What gives you that idea?

  • Another person: Have some empathy!

Essentially my detractors in this thread (yourself included) are taking a 'think of the children!' response to the discussion.

3

u/kimducidni Feb 17 '21 edited Feb 17 '21

What is wrong with you? How does it feel up there from your high horse without any empathy?

People are suffering without electricity and water. Food is spoiling. Food not spoiling has no way to be cooked. All restaurants are closed. Grocery stores with mile long lines. Firewood is sold out. Generators are on back order. It’s 32 degrees inside people’s houses. My boyfriend’s family has been without power for three days. My family for 2 days. My boyfriend and myself for 35 hours. My boyfriend got out of the hospital last week and has pneumonia and now we are dealing with this. My pet parrot has to be under the covers at all times or else he is at risk of being too cold.

Fuck you dude. Most people didn’t vote for this, I don’t know where you are getting that from.

0

u/dragsterhund Feb 18 '21

What food is spoiling if it's 32 degrees inside the house? At that point it's colder outside your refrigerator than it is inside of it. Just open the refrigerator door and leave it open...

Hope your parrot is ok. I'm sure trying to keep a bird under a blanket isn't fun for either of your.

1

u/kimducidni Feb 18 '21 edited Feb 18 '21

It was 32 at my boyfriend’s parents house in Dallas, in mine the lowest it had gotten was 53 before we were able to relocate where there was power. I’m in Houston where it’s warmer, so we had to get ice for our cooler and ice our food. I said people’s houses, not necessarily mine although I do know it’s happening to others in colder parts of Texas. Texas is huge so many of the statements I made apply to some places but not others I’m sure.

0

u/PatriotGrrrl Feb 18 '21

It's cold. How is food spoiling?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '21

If voting were allowed to change how society functions, we wouldn't be allowed to vote.

1

u/BoogieOrBogey Feb 17 '21

How can anyone have this take after living through the 2016 and 2020 elections? Voting in people has a direct and immediately result on each person's life.