States slammed by winter storms that left millions without power for days have traded one crisis for another: Broken water pipes brought on by record-low temperatures have created a shortage of clean drinking water, shut down airports and left hospitals scrambling.
Texas authorities ordered 7 million people—a quarter of the population of the nation’s second-largest state—to boil tap water before drinking it because low water pressure could have allowed bacteria to seep into the system. A man died at an Abilene health care facility when a lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible.
Donated water is unloaded at a distribution site in Houston, Texas, on Feb. 18, 2021. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)About 260,000 homes and businesses in Tennessee’s largest county, which includes Memphis, were told to boil water due to water main ruptures and problems at pumping stations. Memphis International Airport canceled all incoming and outgoing passenger flights Friday due to water pressure issues.
And in Jackson, Mississippi, most of the city of about 161,000 was without water. Crews pumped water to refill city tanks but faced a shortage of chemicals for treatment because icy roads made it difficult for distributors to deliver them, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said.
“We are dealing with an extreme challenge with getting more water through our distribution system,” Lumumba said.
The city was providing water for flushing toilets and drinking, but residents had to drive to set locations to pick it up–leaving elderly and those living on icy roads vulnerable.
Lisa Thomas said her driveway, located on a hill, is a sheet of ice. Her husband, who is on a defibrillator and heart monitor, is running out of his heart medication, with enough to get him through Sunday, because she hasn’t been able to make it to the pharmacy to refill it.
“It would be nice to have some type of answers,” she said. “People are in dire need here. We need urgent help.”
The water woes were the latest misery for residents left without heat or electricity for days after ice and snow storms swept through early in the week, forcing utilities from Minnesota to Texas to implement rolling blackouts to ease strained power grids.
Customers use the light from a cell phone to look in the meat section of a grocery store in Dallas, Texas, on Feb. 16, 2021. (LM Otero/AP Photo)Texas’ grid operators said Friday that the system has returned to normal for the first time since a storm knocked out power to more than 4 million customers. Smaller outages remained, but Bill Magness, president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, says the grid again has enough capacity to provide power throughout the entire system.
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