Texas Winter Storm, Personal Preparedness and Infrastructure Failures
A personal account of the February 2021 Texas power crisis describes maintaining a home above 50 degrees using gas appliances and insulation. The narrative highlights widespread infrastructure failures in Austin, specifically noting how tankless water heaters cracked due to electricity loss and freezing temperatures. Neighbors in the local cul-de-sac faced significant plumbing damage while local news and streaming services remained largely inaccessible.
texas· polar vortex· austin· tankless water heaters· winter storm uri· preparedness
00:00 Pull my mask over my nose. Live in the dark winter and broadcasting live from Opportunity Zone 33 here at the frontier of Austin, Texas. Capital of the drone star state In The Morning everybody! I'm Adam Curry And from Northern Silicon Valley where some people are finally admitting it's global cooling going on. I'm John C. DuVoret It's Crackpot & Buzzkill! Yes thank you for pointing that out this is somehow overlooked detail of what's going on here
00:43 I mean we're in Texas people. Polar Vortex! Well it's been very interesting the past couple of days. Everyone is listening to this show right now, to hear the poop. The hands-on story... First of all, I'm very happy with our personal preparedness during this crisis. And I'm super happy with the performance of our house. These are things that matter especially the house which turns out to be so well insulated that we really were able to maintain above 50 degrees at all times and we had a gas stove and a gas fireplace
01:39 So that was super good. Having the keeper with me, it's like... Whoa! You okay? No. I mean yeah, but the glass almost broke. Oh okay. Phew! Scared me You know, the Keeper grew up in Indiana and lives in Chicago. And she's used to being without power for days on end from her time in Florida so she is totally, totally ready She categorizes everything. She's got you know okay here are our inventories, she has labels on them and you know she's making sure all the faucets are dripping which thank you was the smartest thing we could have done Oh yeah people should know that
02:19 I had never heard of it and they weren't mentioning that on the news. Oh, I thought you would know it because you lived in Jersey! You know? Never did that in Jersey also never had the pipes freeze because the house was kind of built for it but yeah I'd never...I didn't think about it and man our neighbors got screwed And the worst part, we all have or most of us here have tankless water heaters which work on electricity. And then when this happened either the first night or the second night a lot of people's tankless water heaters that the pipes cracked and blew with the exchange so that you know it's like you're not going to get a plumber there's no spare parts to be had. Well also the plumbers are
03:01 Stuck in the snow and there's millions of jobs out there for him. Yeah This is the problem we have is we have not been able to leave the house because it's all ice You know, we're on this cul-de-sac In Washington State usually when you have a freeze like this which has been doesn't happen A lot does happen once in awhile and that fact even in the Bay Area I mean I might be wrong about this but they always the news reports tell you about them keeping the water running Yeah, so also the local news is very very poor. You know when your power's out the thing that you're not going to be able to do is get to television. Most of the streaming was down... Do you have one those radios with a hand crank? I do actually but I didn't use that. I used my Kenwood, you know the ham radio which has great AM and FM
