The Big Texas Freeze - Part 1

With no storms in sight we innocently set off to Colorado for a family visit. When the date for a scheduled return arrived, we had a storm. Our route took us from Colorado, through New Mexico, then Texas, down the panhandle to the deep South.

Colorado and New Mexico seemed fine – cleared roads, gas available, bright sunshine, moderate (by CO/NM standards) temperatures. Even the panhandle wasn’t bad, though our hotel notices in Sweetwater warned of power outages (don’t get caught in an elevator) and pending water issues, including a coming mandate to boil drinking water.

Blithely we struck out the next morning – a jug of water from Walmart, four-wheel drive pickup, long-suffering wife, and faithful dog. But Highway 83, an aspirational interstate, now featured increasingly troubling wreckages – an inverted Penske rental truck, split-open campers, and jack-knifed 18-wheelers. Eventually merging on to I-10, this dystopian landscape only worsened. The bent and mangled tractor/trailer rigs became a regular and arresting feature of the route. But our day was sunny, and the roads were clear and dry. Entering San Antonio we encountered a bit more slush, but traffic was moving and we pushed on, 4-wheel drive churning through puddles. We had planned a brief stop at Costco, but as we coasted toward the off-ramp, San Antonio PD closed all “dangerous” freeways, forcing vehicles on to side streets. We stocked up at Costco, now adding two large packages of bottled drinking water to our five-gallon jug previously snagged at Walmart. We might run out of gas, but we would not die of thirst.

“Roaming outages”, a (new-to-us) Texas catchphrase, meant that the darkened traffic light system throughout San Antonio was basically not working for anyone. No blinking red lights, no cautious yellows, nothing but panicked Texas drivers stopping obediently, one car at a time, at every light, whether there was cross-traffic or not. Of course, all the cops were tied up ordering vehicles off the freeways, so there was no police activity directing traffic in the rest of the city, where the traffic actually now was.

In Maine, where we’re from, we have some knowledge of snow and power outages. Mainers tune into Central Maine Power on Twitter to determine how many days power will be out, start up the generators, and accelerate up snowy driveways in four-wheel drive, thus getting on with life.

So of course, we jumped on Twitter, now following San Antonio PD, San Antonio Emergency Management, and City of San Antonio.

Nothing.

Two hours later we finally departed San Antonio, sometimes taking up to 30 minutes to progress through a key intersection. Now realizing that “roaming outages” were a Texas euphemism for the absence of electricity, we guessed that no electricity could impact gas stations and their ability to pump gas. Seeing the lights on at one, we topped off, walked the dog, and set out for the Rio Grande Valley.

This was smart. As we progressed Southward down iconic Highway 77 we realized that every small town (and each local gas station), was dark. “Roaming outages” weren’t happening in South Texas, just total outages.

We made it home to a dark house and freezing temperatures. In Maine, we would have stoked up the wood stove, run the generator for an hour to keep the fridge cool, and lighted romantic candles and kerosene lanterns. In unprepared South Texas, we layered up, crawled under the covers with headlamps on, and strategically positioned the dog on the bed to provide max body heat. The next day, accessing amazon.com through our cell phone signals, we ordered a generator, propane bottles, and a Coleman stove, basic Maine survival gear.

Three days without electricity ensued. Stores had no milk, bread, nor eggs. Gas stations opened intermittently and lines of an hour or more formed to refuel.

The lights came on but Texans had suffered. As privileged and fairly prepared white folks, with cold-weather experience, we were “uncomfortable” but certainly never in any real danger.

Elsewhere in Texas, people died.

The lack of preparation, thought, and action at apparently every level and source that a regular citizen might expect help seemed to be absent. Most energy was directed to finger-pointing and blaming at various government levels.

The Big Freeze was certainly disruptive, but classic disruption management would posit a “return to normal operations” or something similar.

But with a dangerous new reality like this one, what’s the point?

The objective should perhaps reach beyond disruption management, and address the ability to survive and flourish in new dilemmas and drive response to the lowest and simplest levels, especially when the command and control systems fail in managing this disruption.