TX owners.....

[key01]

I feel horrible for what has happened to Texas and other points South. As has been said, the construction methods and codes are very different than other parts of the country. I'm an architect and deal with these from California to Florida, Minnesota, and Texas, etc. where I have practiced. There are levels of safety for catastrophic events with certain project types and unfortunately residential is not on the preferred list. It gets short-changed.
When the power goes for days and it's winter, expect to lose the battle. Portable generators consume gas that may become difficult to find, with an automatic natural gas generator perhaps being your only option. No homeowner is comfortable spending $10K-$15K for an automatic generator that may never be needed in their lifetime.
Here in Chicago, you all know that this same Arctic blast had us under freezing since February 4th, and our snowpack is the highest it has been since 1979. Yeah, over 40 years. We have buildings collapsing here left and right now.
These annual events will continue to get worse. In the past 10 years, I think we have had 5-100 year floods also.
The best I can add is to continue to be prepared as best you can. Control what you can and stay as safe as possible in the process. Seeing that young boy frozen to death in his own home has broken my heart. I wish you all the best.

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[volcanogod]

We were 76F yesterday here in Austin after being in single digits in the past week. We actually had to run the A/C on our 2nd floor to take out the heat/humidity last night. Crazy damn weather. We still don't have drinkable water so everyone in Austin is in a bad way. Schools cancelled and most employers impacted with limited drinkable water. I did take the opportunity to take out my GT350 yesterday for a drive.

We didn't get water back till yesterday where I live. I went 4 days with having to take spit baths with wipes, so I took 2 showers yesterday just for the fun of it. During the storm we stayed in our house the whole time trying to keep pipes from freezing. I burnt quite a few of my college books.... Accounting and such.

I think honestly the water messes regarding broken pipes is due to code specifying how deep water lines must be buried in the ground. Where I grew up in the panhandle, we never had power or water issues and we had pretty hard winters there.

 

[UnhandledException]

I sincerely appreciate your reply and concur that you are in control of your own future and should plan to prevent/prepare for foreseeable situations.

Do you have natural gas service to your house or are you all electric? If you have natural gas, you have a backup source like an LPG tank? If not, you aren't prepared to lose gas.

In addition, if you have natural gas or LPG, do you have gas detection, isolation, and mitigation capabilities? It would only take a control valve and a few gas detectors with a few lines of code to prevent a catastrophic explosion in your home. But I am guessing you are not preparing for that event - which happens every day in a house in the US. The risk to you, however, is low, because 1 house explosion a day across 330 million homes means it probably won't happen to you. But the consequence is very high.

My point is that this was somewhat "unforeseeable" in my part of Texas. Not Amarillo or points north. And by the time that we knew it was coming, it was a bit late.

But again, I agree. Those that can prepare should, and I'm guessing will.

I have natural gas service and no I am not all electric. My heating is via furnace/forced air.

When I bought our first house (note - "first" house. I had 0 experience with power outages), I wired it up for generator. It was 2 years after that when we experienced our first power outage. Power was out for 4 days and our house was the only house with power for those 4 days in our neighborhood. So even in northeast people don't prepare and I'm probably in minority here.

The generator I have has both gasoline and LPG connection. It has a 8 gallon gasoline tank (I have2x5 gallon red containers that is always full) which lasts around 20 hours when its running 100% load. I also always have 2 LPG tanks that I use as backup (and for BBQ grill). Each of those tanks also last 16 hours. So at any point if I lose power, the gasoline and the LPG tanks is enough for me to run the generator at 100% load for full 48 hours. Then I have the cars which I always fill up before bad weather (even thunderstorm during summer that brings hail and power outages) and in a even further extended power outage (like superstorm sandy), I can suck gasoline out of the tanks. I also have a proper chain saw and a 15 ft pole saw. I had to trim trees and cut down big branches several times to clear power/internet lines.

You cant plan for every disaster. But in basic risk management (and actually more fundamental probability theory in mathematics), risks in aggregate have a higher probability.

What this means in practice is just because a disaster may strike one day and you cant plan for it doesnt mean you shouldnt plan for any disaster. In the same line of thinking, its like saying (in Covid terminology), "I already went out today for shopping. Because I already took risk, I can continue taking further risk by having coffee with friends, then play basketball with another set of friends, walk in the mall, and go to homedepot". Every one of those actions have independent risk profile driven by probability analysis. As you perform more actions, their risk gets added on.

Regarding gas leaks....I'll go back to what I was saying. I can do my best to address things that are in my control to the extent I can. Having natural gas leak detectors that can detect leaks throughout where the gas pipe runs in the house (which here is a lot of gas pipes, at least 100 ft inside the house) is not practical considering proper gas leak detectors are very expensive, not very portable and arent meant to be installed like fire detectors. They do "sniff" tests and have to be moved around the pipe throughout the entire run. I actually had a PSEG person come once and do it and I know what the test looks like and what the device is like. I was told its cost is in multiple thousands of dollars.

But I do have Nest fire/co detectors in 9 different locations in the house, the garage, the breaker box, water heater, pretty much any major part of the house where fire might break out + all rooms, hallways, etc - And I can tell you they work. They smell even tiny bit of burnt wood that happens when you are boring holes in floor joists or trying to drill masonry. I even have cheap $20 cameras pointing at those key locations that detect motion and light so that I can see things like sparks, flood, sump pump backing out, water heater bursting etc. None of this stuff is "professionally installed". None of it costs more than what people pay for vacations or kitchen remodeling or all the other none life saving crap that you don't have to have

 

[I Bleed Ford Blue]

Up here in northern Ohio, when we get an inch or two of snow most people in my neighborhood don't even bother to clean it up, we just drive over it and go about our day. It's just snow, hell it'll melt eventually. We have had some really bad ones in the past tho. Back in Jan 78 there was a blizzard that came thru that was so bad that people literally abandoned their cars on the roads because you couldn't go anywhere. There was even a tractor trailer that was covered in a snow drift along the turnpike and the driver was still inside. When they finally got the plows there they uncovered the truck and found him, still alive, but barely.

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[19GT350R]

This isn't a "100 year storm" issue. It was created when Bush Jr and Texas decided to unregulate power back in the day. Can't blame that on every Texan.

To clarify, the 100 year storm will probably be the 25 year storm soon. (not just in TX).

Not necessarily true. We're dealing with ERCOT in Texas. As for the Bush's level of involvement at some point (no idea, but wouldn't doubt it since I have a healthy distrust of the entire political elitist class?!). If deregulation were the cause of failure, California wouldn't be dealing with 'rolling blackouts' as well, which is largely what it was in Texas. Like someone said last week, 'running out of power in Texas is like starving in a grocery store.' Someone will pay for this mess.

 

[honeybadger]

I have natural gas service and no I am not all electric. My heating is via furnace/forced air.

When I bought our first house (note - "first" house. I had 0 experience with power outages), I wired it up for generator. It was 2 years after that when we experienced our first power outage. Power was out for 4 days and our house was the only house with power for those 4 days in our neighborhood. So even in northeast people don't prepare and I'm probably in minority here.

The generator I have has both gasoline and LPG connection. It has a 8 gallon gasoline tank (I have2x5 gallon red containers that is always full) which lasts around 20 hours when its running 100% load. I also always have 2 LPG tanks that I use as backup (and for BBQ grill). Each of those tanks also last 16 hours. So at any point if I lose power, the gasoline and the LPG tanks is enough for me to run the generator at 100% load for full 48 hours. Then I have the cars which I always fill up before bad weather (even thunderstorm during summer that brings hail and power outages) and in a even further extended power outage (like superstorm sandy), I can suck gasoline out of the tanks. I also have a proper chain saw and a 15 ft pole saw. I had to trim trees and cut down big branches several times to clear power/internet lines.

You cant plan for every disaster. But in basic risk management (and actually more fundamental probability theory in mathematics), risks in aggregate have a higher probability.

What this means in practice is just because a disaster may strike one day and you cant plan for it doesnt mean you shouldnt plan for any disaster. In the same line of thinking, its like saying (in Covid terminology), "I already went out today for shopping. Because I already took risk, I can continue taking further risk by having coffee with friends, then play basketball with another set of friends, walk in the mall, and go to homedepot". Every one of those actions have independent risk profile driven by probability analysis. As you perform more actions, their risk gets added on.

Regarding gas leaks....I'll go back to what I was saying. I can do my best to address things that are in my control to the extent I can. Having natural gas leak detectors that can detect leaks throughout where the gas pipe runs in the house (which here is a lot of gas pipes, at least 100 ft inside the house) is not practical considering proper gas leak detectors are very expensive, not very portable and arent meant to be installed like fire detectors. They do "sniff" tests and have to be moved around the pipe throughout the entire run. I actually had a PSEG person come once and do it and I know what the test looks like and what the device is like. I was told its cost is in multiple thousands of dollars.

But I do have Nest fire/co detectors in 9 different locations in the house, the garage, the breaker box, water heater, pretty much any major part of the house where fire might break out + all rooms, hallways, etc - And I can tell you they work. They smell even tiny bit of burnt wood that happens when you are boring holes in floor joists or trying to drill masonry. I even have cheap $20 cameras pointing at those key locations that detect motion and light so that I can see things like sparks, flood, sump pump backing out, water heater bursting etc. None of this stuff is "professionally installed". None of it costs more than what people pay for vacations or kitchen remodeling or all the other none life saving crap that you don't have to have

I think the part you maybe be missing is that many people were prepared for this and still got wrecked. In your generator example - gas was shut off for many and propane/gasoline was out everywhere days ahead of time (along with food).

I don't think anyone disagrees with your sentiment. But I do think you're not accounting for how bad it really was/is. If everyone prepared like you, we'd never would have even had a grid failure to begin with...


There's what should be done and there's reality. Infrastructure should be built for the reality -- shit goes wrong, people aren't prepared, etc. It should be designed and maintained to be the absolute last thing to fail in society and ideally last much, much longer.

Just because someone didn't buy a backup generator 3 weeks beforehand doesn't mean they deserved to die of hypothermia in their house. At least that's how I feel.

 

[Bullitt 2159]

Wow, it's so interesting to read all of these different perspectives from people in different araes of the country! As one of the starters of the you should get a generator topic, I've never even thought of having a back up in case the natural gas stopped flowing here in the North. Most houses would freeze just like Texas did. We also couldn't handle 100 degrees in the summer very well. Alot of good conversation on this one. Glad I read it.

 

[hlfbkd420]

Not necessarily true. We're dealing with ERCOT in Texas. As for the Bush's level of involvement at some point (no idea, but wouldn't doubt it since I have a healthy distrust of the entire political elitist class?!). If deregulation were the cause of failure, California wouldn't be dealing with 'rolling blackouts' as well, which is largely what it was in Texas. Like someone said last week, 'running out of power in Texas is like starving in a grocery store.' Someone will pay for this mess.

That is *exactly* the reason why TX and CA are having rolling blackouts. I read a great article about this the other day. I know it's from a leftist source but it's interesting nonetheless. California has an advantage over TX though, they can buy power from neighboring states.. TX cannot because they are an island.

There are 3 power grids in the US. East, West, and TX.

Texas Power Grid Run by ERCOT Set Up the State for Disaster (msn.com)

(Even worse... Most leaders of ERCOT don't live in TX... Even Teddy Cruz got out before the problems hit)

And for anyone saying that you should be able to prepare for events like these that hardly ever happen... If the power went off in the summer in Phoenix for a week, my only choice to cool off would be to sit in my car with it running. Or sleep/camp outside in 115 degree heat. There is no generator that's going to power my AC in the summer. My house would be a sauna.

Could *I* survive? Yes... Can our elderly population? Probably not.

 

[NDALLAS40]

from someone who’s lived in a few other major cities. Will say I enjoy what’s offered here and how it’s offered. None of the cities Ive lived in were without major issues. Change needs to happen over this event, hopefully folks make some noise. All we can do is try to make it better. I like it here.

I've lived in Houston, Austin, San Antonio (briefly), Denver, New York, Newark, Pensacola, and my native Dallas. I can say from experience, shit happens everywhere. The only variable is when and where. The ticking time bomb known as the Texas Power grid, has been common knowledge for many, many years. And the issues with water plants and pipelines degradation have been no secret either.
Even though this has been characterized as a "100 year event", it only got a few degrees colder than it did in 2011 and took only a couple of extra days for the temperatures to break. We get cold snaps far more often than most people think. In 2011, thousands lost power in temperatures that would be considered balmy in Minnesota or Montana. And there have been many years when severe cold makes it this far south, but this time it was just a few degrees colder. The cause of these massive power outages is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago: Far less reserves on standby to cover the increased power demand that spikes in extended frigid periods. Texas is all about independence and deregulation because that is just step away from Communism, total police state. (LMFAO)
By opting to be independent from the rest of the country's power supply grid, we also severed any ties with sources that provide emergency backup power in cases just like this. The rest of the country has plenty of unused power on standby. That's why it could be 30 below in Northern Michigan and it wouldn't even make the news.
ERCOT had known what was coming for at least a week. These guys failed to cover the impending shortages, then didn't start rolling blackouts until the situation almost went into shutdown mode which would have meant weeks instead of days without power. Energy experts monitoring the situation have said the grid was within minutes of reaching that "meltdown" moment. (not a reactor core meltdown, but 10 times more damaging than we actually suffered). Once the process starts, it has to run it's course and can't be stopped.
It will be interesting to see what steps the boneheads in Austin take this time. Based on past history, we're not expecting too much. So far, not a single ERCOT executive has resigned or been asked to resign.

edit: Frozen windmills and cloudy skies had little or nothing to do with this event. Renewable energy account for only about 10% of the power grid.

edit 2: Just saw today that 5 ERCOT board members resigned.

 

[Scoobs]

FYI the Western Interconnection and the Eastern Interconnection in the the US are not " American " Interconnections, they are " North American " Interconnections. Eastern states in the US can draw power from eastern Canadian provinces and vice versa, and the same applies in the western states and western Canadian provinces. Texas didn't just cut off their power grid from the rest of the US, they cut their power grid off from the rest of North America including parts of Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid#/media/File:NERC-map-en.svg

And I should also add that the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Quebec Interconnection are also connected to each other and can share power.

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