Combat,
Jazz is right about the chain of command when it comes to requests. It comes from the Governor who by the way has his own National Guard, etc. However, Bush was indeed lambasted for the Hurricane Katrina and rightly so. He was eviscerated for that one and the only thing I remember about his response was "Brownie your doing a heck of job". He resigned in disgrace 10 days later...Brownie that is. Bush's answer to that one was sending General Honore. Good call, but it was too late and no doubt Bush has an enormous amount of contrition about that one. I don't think he ever let it go.
When I had news on during the blackouts I saw a picture of El Presidente looking at the Mars rover moon landing on some news station. I was like...well I changed the channel cursing at the TV.
Also, Combat we are a stand alone power grid. The "Energy Capital" of the world as they call it. How about them apples now? The other states couldn't support us as they were supporting there own efforts, but I do believe if we had been "connected" to their grid we would have not had so many blackouts. But, ah wait if we connect then we fall into Federally governed juice, which by Gawd Texas wouldn't do cause we are a Republic by golly. The thought of the Feds in our juice is a Hell NO! We have to keep our juice cheaper than the rest of the country...when it works.
Panzer,
The CEO of CPS energy...aka the city owned utility gets paid a cool 950K a year to be warm and toasty when she is zooming her spiel. Since, when does a city employee get paid more than the President? Why, in San Antonio of course! For whatever reason we pay the officials-city manager-Cps-people gobshites of money for a salary. To do what? Leave the Riverwalk light on during a blackout. Idiots...the lot of them. I think she'll have to move once she resigns...she won't be able to show her face in this town ever again.
Mike,
Did you read the FB post of Mayor Tim Boyd of Colorado City, TX yet? Oh, thats a doozy!
Yes, Commodore TD left the ship while it was sinking. It was all hands on deck! Thus, he will always be a scallywag.
Pax,
Hey man, thank you for your concern and like minded disdain for the cold. Its re-assuring that other people have the same loathe I do. I don't panic per se, but man does it put me in a dark zone of memory. Its like I am reliving a nightmare and extreme cold triggers it to making it a waking/walking nightmare. Now on the other hand there are those who loathe the heat. I am not one of them as I love it. But, if the power goes out during the summer, that too can be miserable, but cool shower always hits the spot and makes it tolerable. And speaking of the pools I got one nice shattered pool pump from the cold. I completely turn the power off to the pool after the second day as it was pointless at that point. All was well, but then we saw one line shattered in place. The pool company will be out next week to sort it out, but until we completely thaw I won't know. The pool did come in handy for bucketing water to the house for the commodes and my Home Depot bucket shower and if the situation got worse that would have been our drinking water.
My thoughts on this disaster are this: if the freeze continued for two or more days things would have become critical. No doubt there would be deaths in the tens of thousands. Yes, tens of thousand because I found out today that many of my friends did not have gas fireplaces they had wood and ran out. There were those who at one point like us had no heat or water. The stores were closed which meant no access to food. No food, no water and no heat would have culminated in the single worst catastrophe this state has ever seen. I fear desperation would have taking over and in some cases there was and people died because of it. The family in Houston burned to death in their own home, carbon monoxide poisoning and not to mention hypothermia. Folks would have (and did) die because of lack of power for their medical devices or medications. Babies, like the elderly are the most vulnerable and would have died because of the harsh conditions. We were close, so close...in fact too close.
A bunch of the neighborhood kids came over and brought their take out Olive Garden to come eat at our house. All the kids seem to come over and one of them told us her house had power the entire time. I was shocked as razed her a bit, but come to find out they live in the same grid as a hospital. Interesting. Another kid asked me what we would have done if the storm continued. I told her that we would have had to accommodate my niece who just moved here and has no fireplace. My eldest too and her kids who lives in apartment down the street whose only warm spot was the community hall way. After that I would only imagine that I would either send out texts or receive texts from friends who I stayed in contact with who were running out of food, water and wood to burn. I had one person in mind and my wife had another person on standby to offer our house during the crisis. Come to find out it was our house builder who my wife was communicating with and lives in an exquisite home that did not have a gas fireplace. He built his own home with woodturning fireplace and sure enough he ran out of firewood. He began to burn 2x4's that were in his garage which lasted until the power came back on. But, he told the wife he was on barely hanging on and on the brink of fight or flight.
Again, if the storm lasted I think even one more day, it would have been over for a lot of Texans.
John from Texas
