AUSTIN, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/AP) – A cold winter blast in the US plunged Texas into an unusually icy emergency on Monday, February 15, destroying the power of more than 2 million people and closing food stores and dangerous snow roads.
Slow thawing and lower freezing ahead also had an impact on the Texas distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.
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The worsening conditions have stopped the delivery of COVID-19 vaccine deliveries and left some Texas suppliers in a hurry to find people who receive doses that expire in a few hours.
State health officials said Texas, which was due to receive more than 400,000 additional doses of the vaccine this week, now does not expect deliveries to take place at least Wednesday.
But with the doses already on hand, expiring, Rice University has suddenly begun offering vaccines on its closed campus in Houston.
Harris Health System told the school it had about 1,000 vaccines that were “going to be lost” and asked if the school could find decision-makers, said Doug Miller, a university spokesman.
“It simply came to our notice then. He needs to take care of that quickly, “Miller said.
Temperatures entered single figures as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would turn on, while the state’s overwhelmed power grid it was collected in rotating stops which are usually observed only in the summers of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).
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The storm was part of a massive system that brought snow, sleet and icy rain to the southern plains and spread across the Ohio Valley and northeast. Southwest Power Pool, a utility group in 14 states, has called for power outages as the backup power supply has been depleted. Some utilities said they were starting to shut down, while others urged customers to reduce electricity consumption.
“We’re living a truly historic event that’s happening right now,” said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the magnitude of freezing temperatures.
In Houston, where county leaders had warned that frost could cause problems on the scale of massive hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast, an electricity supplier said power may not be restored in some homes until Tuesday.
“This meteorological event is truly unprecedented. We all live here, we know that, ”said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at Electric Reliability Council in Texas. He defended the preparations made by the network operators and described the system’s request as a record setting.
“This event has far exceeded the design parameters for a typical, or even extreme, winter in Texas, for which you would normally plan. And that’s really the result we see, “said Woodfin.
President Joe Biden also declared an emergency in Texas in a statement Sunday night. The statement is meant to add federal aid to local and state response efforts.
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