It's been quite a a week. In case you've been under a rock, let me summarize it with this little gem:
We got quite the winter storm. Due to what I like to call corporate greed, the electric grid was not prepared in the slightest. Ten years ago, before I moved back here, there was a similar event in which it was discovered that said grid was not winterized. So for 10 entire years they had the opportunity to upgrade and prepare for another mega winter storm and failed to do so.
It breaks my heart to read about the people that literally froze to death. Like this little 11 year old boy, spend Monday playing in snow that he had never seen before and then overnight he froze to death.
My little family did, luckily, keep power. But we did lose water, and the stove. While the stove wasn't exactly a casualty of the storm, it isn't making the current boil water notice easy to handle. In the grand scheme though, no broken pipes, no trees on cars, no big damage at least for now. Ask me about my budget later when I get my gas bill.
I want to throw a shout out to Beto and AOC and everyone else (surprisingly they seem to be democrats) that are doing whatever they can to help. The donations, the water, the supplies. They are all so very appreciated. Our own Senators could be doing things to help, but I guess they're busy jetting off to warmer places.
I hear the other side saying why shouldn't they, they have the means. I don't know, maybe because they are political figures that should be helping the state they represent. It doesn't have to be in one's job description to be a helpful and caring human being. They have connections and can get supplies and things that are needed (see the paragraph above this!).
I also hear that we shouldn't be blaming ERCOT, the board in charge of the Texas power grid. Texas doesn't want to be regulated, we want freedom and this goes with it and we should have been prepared. Bullshit. I pay for electric service, I expect that to be delivered. I understand a storm can knock down a power line disrupting service, that's acceptable. Having power stations FREEZE UP BECAUSE THEY AREN'T WINTERIZED when we learned 10 years ago they needed to be is unacceptable. Let me put this another way:
I'm a web designer and I offer website hosting to my clients. Back when I first started out and was getting my processes in order, probably had 3-4 clients at the time, I experienced the worst time of my business life. I was a hosting reseller. My host created backups stored off site. That felt appropriate to me so I left it at that and moved on to other "getting set up" things and getting my file system in order, etc. Well, in the span one week my laptop hard drive died, my host's server crashed and burned and the backups were not usable. Could it get any worse?! I spent the week in tears. I lost files, I lost my clients' websites. While I waited for my computer to be fixed I had to quickly REBUILD those websites from memory. My clients paid me for a service and it was up to me to deliver it. They suffered downtime and I put in a lot of unpaid hours. It truly was my fault for not having a second set of back ups. It was my fault that my own machine wasn't fully backed up to an external source (thankfully some files were). But in the end, they paid me and it was my responsibility to deliver. Once I finished I immediately set up a second set of offsite backups for all of my client files and finished organizing my machine and backing it up regularly.
I couldn't very well turn to my clients and say oh well, it's your fault for not having a second website setup and ready to switch to. I charged them for a service and I needed to provide it, regardless of what it cost ME. I fully believe it is wrong to take my mistake (or in this case ERCOT's mistake) and pass it on to the consumer. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Sure, some of my clients might have had their own backup, or some Texans might have had generators, but that's not to be expected from everyone.
I've lived in the upper east coast area. I know what winter storms are like and I know how to prepare for them. Feet of snow in the forecast means grabbing a few extra groceries, some hot cocoa and some baking supplies. In all my years of living up there (15-ish), not once was this kind of devastation an issue. I don't remember Maine's ice storm being this bad and that was the worst I had experienced until now. One can argue they are better prepared and WINTERIZED up there, but hey, climate change is real and all areas need to prepare for all weather extremes.
So yeah, a week ago I was wearing several layers under a blanket with a heater blowing on me. Today I had the sunroof open, no jacket and soaked up some vitamin D while driving on clear roads. Gotta love it.