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Houston storm: At least 5 killed, more than 600,000 without power (abcnews.go.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/news

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But I thought that after the disastrous winter a few years ago, Texas politicians would take action to ensure the reliability of their power grid? How could this be?

Oh, wait, their leadership spent all their time engaged in stupid culture-war bullshit like bussing migrants and deliberately drowning them with barbed wire and passing any number of bills that didn't look out for the well being of their constituents. Holy fuck! I'm so disillusioned. I never thought in a million years that this would happen again.

You reap what you sow, you fucks. And to all the progressive people in Texas who voted against the shits that did this to you, my heart goes out to you.

[–] qantravon 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I was born and raised in Texas, and as much as I've grown tired of their shit, this is a vastly different situation to the last couple of power incidents they've had.

This was essentially a freak storm that came out of nowhere with something like a couple of hours of notice, spawned multiple tornadoes that took out a bunch of infrastructure, including at least one high-voltage transmission tower, and cut a path over a thousand miles, from Houston, Texas all the way to Cape Canaveral, Florida.

There are no regulations they're circumventing by being in their own power grid that could have avoided this, and even being interconnected wouldn't help much when the transmission lines have been ripped apart.

[–] Pfeffy 6 points 5 months ago

Let's wait and see how their recovery process goes compared to the other states it affected. Then you might have a point. I predict it's going to go poorly and probably there will be rate hikes for the captured customers, while the politicians pocket whatever they can squeeze out of the federal government.

[–] TexasDrunk 1 points 5 months ago

Yep. There's shit down all over the place. Usually I'd be getting ready to go out drinking right now (I'm a drunk, it's what I do) but I've taken in a few friends with no electricity and we're currently smoking a brisket and playing music on the back porch.

This will be the first weekend since the snowpocolypse that I'm not out doing something all weekend long. I've seen the pictures and heard what's going on from friends. I don't have any desire to go see how bad it is myself.

Thank you for pointing out the truth of the situation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Interesting take. Noted.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Texan here, it was pretty bad. I was at my job and had to go over tornado protocol with everyone. One of my coworkers had their garage destroyed by the pressure and/or wind and is without power for weeks. My work was out 5 minutes.

[–] TexasDrunk 11 points 5 months ago

I got super lucky and mine was only out for a couple of hours. It's over 90° outside right now. There's about to be a bunch more dead people in this town due to lack of AC.

I hope your coworker is going to be ok.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How often does this happen in your area?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Not often, I hadn't even heard about the storm and suddenly it was raining sideways. We're more used to flooding multiple times a year, since we're always on the dirty side of hurricanes and not the wind side.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (3 children)

They really went for the heartstrings by showing a damaged strip club. 😔

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I'm actually devastated

[–] FlyingSquid 4 points 5 months ago

The former strip club in this town just got torn down, but before it did, someone spraypainted, "we will never forget you, [stripper names]." on the wall. I wish I had taken a picture.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

No, not the ~~saloon~~ tiddy bar!

[–] FlyingSquid 11 points 5 months ago

Worse will be coming. Much worse.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Bet they pull themselves out of this by their bootstraps and don't ask for any federal aid!

You got this privately owned power grid! Prove us all wrong that you suck and the people who vote in the republicans who allow this to continue have the intelligence of a bag of Quikrete.

[–] disguy_ovahea 7 points 5 months ago

Houston has more Democratic citizens than Republican. Their current mayor is a Democrat, and they voted for the Democratic nominated President in the last four elections. Austin is very similar. They’re blue islands in the red state, living under the oppressive reign of Abbott.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

By all means fuck the other half of the state under voter suppression right!? Houston is so blue that Harris County is the primary reason for their voter suppression. Do go on with your generalizations that make you feel strong and powerful by lumping everyone in a large geographical region together. Especially great character to do so on the premise of people's suffering.

[–] TexasDrunk 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You saw Texas and made a sweeping assumption because you can't think further than "Texas bad". The government is literally passing bills trying to make sure our votes don't count in solidly blue Harris county.

But fuck me and the rest of the residents of Houston I guess. Since rural areas rule the state everyone in Houston can just fucking die.

Edit: At least a couple of people really do want me and the rest of Houston to just die. This in response to a brain dead comment about a grid that has nothing to do with the current outages because the transmission lines are down. Are they supposed to shoot electricity directly to people's houses through the air?

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I hope you guys are all alright man. So I feel bad making a joke about this "Are they supposed to shoot electricity directly to people's houses through the air? ". Think that would be solar panels and batteries, sending excess back to the grid. So long as the roof was still there, the panels would be there for those houses hopefully. Then you can at least go to some of the houses in the neighborhood that have power when it gets to hot or to get a warm shower.

The future may hold neighborhoods having a local grid between their houses, so they can supply each other, and then send excess back to the main grid. Could effectivley keep large area power outages from being an issue, especially in natural disasters.

[–] TexasDrunk 3 points 5 months ago

You bring up a really good point. This has told me it's about damn time that I quit putting off getting solar on my place. I've put it off because I've got everything except the house paid off and didn't want to take on more debt. But I'm just super lucky that my neighborhood is fine and I personally didn't lose electricity for long at all. I actually didn't know how bad it was until last night.

Me and mine are good. I've got friends and their kids who have no electricity set up in my extra bedroom and in the living room. They're staying until they get electricity back.

I appreciate the well wishes. Don't feel bad about the joke at all because it's pretty solid and had a helpful side effect.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you actually read the article, it says they are receiving federal aid

[–] RedditWanderer 4 points 5 months ago

That's the joke.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Looks like mother nature took a big ol' bite outta that building. Monch.