Here’s my experience over the past week, as I sit in my warm home on a Saturday morning with power, gas, and non-potable water.

Preamble – Friday I noticed my heater wasn’t functioning as it should, and heard the forecast. I called my HVAC guy, who came over, cleaned the ignitor, replaced a capacitor, and suggested a maintenance plan. Bought some new filters at the big box hardware store, and spotted my dentist (I think – everyone was wearing masks) buying styrofoam faucet covers.

Sunday – Valentine’s Day.

We knew a storm was coming, with snow and cold, colder than I had experienced in my home in Austin before. I’ve lived in the same house for almost 20 years, and it has weathered the cold reasonably well. I wrapped the outside taps. We had gone grocery shopping the day before, so we had some food. I got candles and flashlights. My wife cooked up a big pot of posole which we shared with our neighbors across the street. I made a last minute run to the corner store and picked up some chocolate bars (because Valentine’s Day), which the dog snarfed off the counter when no one was watching. Since the roads were already deteriorating with graupel and sleet, my wife made calls to an animal poison control center. We were able to borrow some hydrogen peroxide from a neighbor to purge the dog. A few messy moments skidding a blind barfing pup along the street later and this particular danger passed. Otter seemed ok. We settled in for a cold night.

Monday – Presidents Day

I woke up a little after 2:00 am to quiet. No heater. No alarm clock. I fumbled around and found my phone.

Rolling power outages. I can handle that. Deal with electronics and power strips. Charge the phones. Inconvenient, but manageable. This sort of outage was what I anticipated, though in retrospect I can’t remember exactly where I heard it. I believe I heard it on the radio.

The snow was coming down, not the usual big wet flakes like we got a couple of weeks ago, but fine powder. It was beautiful, and more than I had ever seen in Austin. I was born in Minnesota, but when I was 7, my family moved to Dallas. My experiences with snow have been carefree -an inconvenience, at worst, or a serendipitous relief from routine. Growing up in Dallas, my brother and I would take the opportunities afforded by snow days to walk with some neighbor kids to McDonalds. We’d eat a burger and drink some hot cocoa, and wander home to warm up. I had the urge to go for a walk around the neighborhood, but hesitated because I couldn’t manage the last step: warming up. As the day wore on, social medias alerted us that the rolling black-outs were not going to roll, and it was going to be as cold as it had ever been in Austin. The house was getting colder.

My wife’s friend who lives about half a mile away still had power, and invited us to spend the night. I was approaching serious freakout mode about the house, waiting for some calamity (burst pipes, natural gas explosion, downed power lines). We decided that she, the small dog, and my son would go to the warmth of the neighbors while I volunteered to stay at home with the big dog and the two kittens. I took a hot bath, (still had gas! still had water!), bundled up in nearly every available blanket. Tucked in with phone and flashlight, I read a good chunk of Barrayar on my iPad, with big dog snoozing beside me. The kittens were invited, but decided to huddle together on a blanket in the living room.

Shrove Tuesday

I woke up at 5:30 or so, after an odd night’s sleep of obsessively checking the water pressure. It was very quiet. No machines running, the birds present but not singing and the snow acting like a blanket of acoustic insulation outside. It was 10 outside, and 45 inside. I boiled some water for oatmeal and instant coffee. My wife found the instant coffee the day before when we realized that boiling water and a French press are not much good without a way to grind the beans. I streamed the local radio from my phone to find some balm of routine for my anxious brain. The news on the failure was messed up, and this was confirmed by obsession with the frustratingly static outage map.

My wife called and convinced me of the virtues of warming up at the neighbor’s house. Since the news seemed bleak – another day of power outage and continued below freezing weather, I agreed. She drove down to get me. I transferred the items in our freezer to a cooler packed with snow, made some more obsessive checks to the water pressure, bundled up and went over to the neighbor’s warming station. We came back in the afternoon. The house had not warmed up, nor had it got any colder. The kittens were ok, which was lucky since there was not room for them at the inn.

The rage was building as news filtered in with a seeming lack of compassion from state leaders, who seemed to be focusing on assessing blame rather than dealing with the immediate ongoing problem. The only direction was to conserve energy, which is not helpful when you have none. The vanity lights on the buildings downtown were another focus of rage, and the neighbors suggested that the rage would likely light up the Frost Tower to a portal to usher in the interdimensional demon ERCOT. I didn’t sleep well.

Wednesday – Entierro de la Sardina

Big dog woke me up Monday to invite me on a walk. Freezing rain fell on a roads covered with a slushy non-alcoholic daiquiri. It was warmer, but not that much warmer. Word on social media was that the power was coming on in our neighborhood. After coffee and my wife confirming with the neighbors, (and another walk for the small dog) I volunteered to walk back. I was worried about the kittens and the pipes.

The kittens were fine. The copped some attitude, but nothing some well placed skritches and a handful of treats couldn’t overcome. The house did indeed have power. The pipes were… still ok! I repacked the freezer (frozen meats still frozen!) and took a shower. My wife and son came by later, with the pups.

At sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday, I got some messaging that Texas Gas Service was warning of a potential outage. A gas outage would suck, but there was not follow-up and I guess they just floated that out there to increase dread and anxiety. The Austin Water folks were starting to freak out, but they meant it. Wednesday evening, I got this text.

So I’m still boiling water. But it has thawed. I’m luckier that a lot of people.

Lessons I Learned:

If you broadcast an alert to people, and conditions change, send another with the updated information. The information that the power may be off for around 40 minutes may not even have been true at the time, but there was no follow-up. Austin Energy left a stressed population to scrounge for their own information. Austin Energy had better information, and the capacity to share it, but did not, and let that old, inaccurate text, be the total of their emergency communications.

If you don’t know how to drive in ice and snow, marry someone who does.

The emergency was initially a weather event, but became very quickly a failed infrastructure event. Maybe that’s why big storms are named – the citizens suffering can focus their rage on Harvey, or Ike, or Sandy. This weather event had no name. The weather didn’t take down my power lines. The grid operator told my utility to cut all the power to circuits that did not support critical infrastructure. It wasn’t a storm, it was ERCOT. Maybe that makes it harder to get a psychic grip on and to rally support. People still died, cold and alone. One of my US Senators went to the Capitol Area Food Bank to help deliver food. The other bailed on his state and his poodle and went to Mexico.

Let people know how to get help, or how to help rather than generate rag and place blame.

Pipes burst due to pressure rather than expansion. If you are going to leave your house for a while in the cold, shut off the water at the curb, and drain the system.