Frustrated Texans endure winter storm with no power, heat
Frustrated Texans endure winter storm with no power, heat
AUSTIN, Texas -
Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in homes without power for a second day Thursday, most of them around booming Austin, and fading hopes of a quick fix stirred grim memories of a deadly 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm across the southern U.S.
The freeze has been blamed for at least 10 traffic deaths on slick roads this week in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. And even as Texas finally began thawing Thursday, a new Artic front from Canada was headed toward the northern U.S. and threatening New England with potentially the coldest weather in decades. Wind chills could dive below minus 50 (minus 45 Celsius).
In Austin, city officials compared the damage from fallen trees and iced-over power lines to tornadoes as they came under mounting criticism for slow repairs and shifting timelines to restore power.
"We had hoped to make more progress today," said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy. "And that simply has not happened."
Across Texas more than 280,000 customers were without power Thursday night, down from 430,000 earlier in the day, according to PowerOutage.us. The failures were most widespread in Austin, where impatience was rising among 150,000 customers nearly two days after the electricity first went out, which for many also means no heat. Power failures have affected about 30% of customers in the city of nearly a million at any given time since Wednesday.
By Thursday night, Austin officials backtracked on early estimates that power would be fully restored by Friday evening, saying the extent of the damage was worse than originally calculated and that they could no longer predict when all the lights may come back on.
Allison Rizzolo, who lost power in Austin, told KEYE-TV that she wished there were more clarity from the city on what to do or expect.
"I get that there's a fine line between preparedness and panic, but I wish they'd been more aggressive in their communications," Rizzolo said.
For many Texans, it was the second time in three years that a February freeze -- temperatures were in the 30s Thursday with wind chills below freezing -- caused prolonged outages and uncertainty over when the lights would come back on.
Unlike the 2021 blackouts in Texas, when hundreds of people died after the state's grid was pushed to the brink of total failure because of a lack of generation, the outages in Austin this time were largely the result of frozen equipment and ice-burdened trees and limbs falling on power lines. But the differences were little comfort to Austin residents and businesses that also lost power for days two years ago.
Among those still without power Thursday was the Central Texas Food Bank, according to Travis County Judge Andy Brown, the county's top elected official.
"They have 21 counties to serve. They've been down for at least three days now. There's a lot of need that they have," Brown said.
School systems in the Dallas and Austin area, plus many in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, closed Thursday as snow, sleet and freezing rain continued to push through. In Austin, schools will not open until next week at the earliest.
Hundreds more flights were canceled again in Texas, although not as many as in previous days.
Airport crews battled ice to keep runways open. By Thursday morning, airlines had canceled more than 500 flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport -- more than a quarter of all flights scheduled for the day. Still, that was down from about 1,300 cancellations on Wednesday and more than 1,000 on Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com.
Dozens more flights were canceled at Dallas Love Field and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Another wave of frigid weather in the U.S. is on the horizon, with an Arctic cold front expected to move from Canada into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest and sweep into the Northeast by Friday.
In a briefing Thursday with the federal Weather Prediction Center, New Englanders were warned that wind chills -- the combined effect of wind and cold air on exposed skin -- in the minus 50s "could be the coldest felt in decades."
The strong winds and cold air will create wind chills "rarely seen in northern and eastern Maine," according to an advisory from the National Weather Service office in Caribou, Maine.
Jay Broccolo, director of weather operations at an observatory on New Hampshire's Mount Washington -- which for decades held the world record for the fastest wind gust -- said Thursday that wind speeds could top 100 mph (160 km/h).
"We take safety really seriously in the higher summits," Broccolo said, "and this weekend's forecast is looking pretty gnarly, even for our standards."
------
Miller reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press Airlines Writer Dave Koenig in Dallas and writers Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Rogers Communications Inc's $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. cleared the last regulatory hurdle Friday, more than two years after the deal was first announced.
The six people whose bodies were recovered from the St. Lawrence River Thursday consisted of two families of Romania and Indian origins who were likely trying to enter the U.S. illegally, police said Friday.
Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, prosecutors and defense lawyers said Thursday, making him the first former U.S. president to face a criminal charge and jolting his bid to retake the White House next year.
Canadian Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne has approved Rogers Communications Inc.'s $20-billion takeover of rival telecom Shaw Communications Inc., but there are conditions attached and penalties of up to $1 billion if the companies violate them.
The numbers of babies born with syphilis in Canada are rising at a far faster rate than recorded in the United States or Europe, an increase public health experts said is driven by increased methamphetamine use and lack of access to the public health system for Indigenous people.
Disgraced South African Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius has been denied parole, the lawyer for Reeva Steenkamp's parents said after the parole hearing.
A Toronto man, whose neighbours vanished eight years ago and left their home completely abandoned, said he's fed up living next door to a property that is in complete disarray.
Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole says he will not seek re-election and plans to resign his seat this spring. The Ontario MP led the Conservatives and served as official Opposition leader from August 2020 until February 2022, when a majority of his caucus voted to remove him from the post.
The vote of a Manhattan grand jury to indict the Republican former president on charges related to hush money payments made on his behalf during his 2016 presidential campaign catapults the now-candidate Donald Trump into a new era of legal risk and complicates his attempts to return to the White House.
The bodies of six people, including one child, were found in the St. Lawrence River Thursday afternoon after an air search involving the Canadian Coast Guard, the Akwesasne Mohawk Police said.
Canada needs standardized data on violence on transit systems to help tackle issues ranging from a lack of mental health supports to eroding public trust, say researchers, citing the recent stabbing death of a 16-year-old boy at a Toronto station as the latest example of random attacks on commuters.
Four of the Vancouver police officers involved in the violent 2015 arrest of Myles Gray – which ended with the 33-year-old dying in handcuffs – claim they were directed by their union not to keep notes about what happened, in violation of department policy.
A proposed class-action lawsuit over infamous brainwashing experiments at a Montreal psychiatric hospital was before Quebec's highest court Thursday, as victims attempted to remove immunity granted to the United States government.
The federal government now expects far more Canadians with long-overdue dental needs to sign up for its insurance plan, and the health minister says that's why the estimated cost has risen by $7 billion.
Thirty-six bodies have been found inside a well at a Hindu temple in central India after dozens of people attending a festival fell into the muddy water when its cover collapsed, officials said Friday.
A Philippine coast guard commander said Friday that the tragic scenes of death his team saw aboard a gutted ferry, including bodies of adults clutching children, had moved them to tears and sparked fears other passengers could be found dead in the still-smouldering ship.
King Charles III commemorated the more than 30,000 people, mostly German civilians, who were killed in the Allied bombing of Hamburg almost 80 years ago as he visited the northern city Friday on the last leg of his first foreign trip since becoming monarch.
Several members of the 16-man crew on a Liberia-flagged tanker are being held hostage by pirates who boarded the ship in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea last week, the Danish shipper that owns the vessel said Friday.
Pope Francis is expected to be discharged on Saturday from the Rome hospital where he is being treated for bronchitis as his recovery proceeds in a 'normal' way, even had pizza for dinner and will be in St. Peter's Square for Palm Sunday Mass, the Vatican said.
The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the 'Doctrine of Discovery,' the theories backed by 15th-century 'papal bulls' that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property law today.
Former Conservative leader Erin O'Toole says he will not seek re-election and plans to resign his seat this spring. The Ontario MP led the Conservatives and served as official Opposition leader from August 2020 until February 2022, when a majority of his caucus voted to remove him from the post.
The Liberal government's controversial online-streaming bill is one step closer to passing after the House of Commons approved most of the Senate's amendments to the proposed legislation.
Rogers Communications Inc's $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. cleared the last regulatory hurdle Friday, more than two years after the deal was first announced.
The federal government now expects far more Canadians with long-overdue dental needs to sign up for its insurance plan, and the health minister says that's why the estimated cost has risen by $7 billion.
The B.C. government's bid to restrict the sale of diabetes drug Ozempic to prevent non-Canadian residents draining supplies was the right move and a long time coming, says Brett Skinner, founder and CEO of the Canadian Health Policy Institute.
The numbers of babies born with syphilis in Canada are rising at a far faster rate than recorded in the United States or Europe, an increase public health experts said is driven by increased methamphetamine use and lack of access to the public health system for Indigenous people.
Italy's data protection agency said on Friday it had opened a probe into OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot over a suspected breach of the artificial intelligence application's data collection rules.
New research suggests the classic image of a Tyrannosaurus rex with massive, sharp teeth might be wrong. A study in the journal Science suggests the teeth on a T. rex was likely covered by scaly lips and didn't stick out when its mouth was closed.
This week, pop culture critic Richard Crouse reviews new movies: 'Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,' 'Spinning Gold,' 'Tetris' and 'Space Oddity'
Ryan Reynolds spent the day in Ottawa as he continues his efforts to buy the Senators, meeting with officials from the city of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission and attending the Senators game.
Stocks are ticking higher Friday to keep Wall Street on track for a winning March and first quarter of the year, despite a long list of worries thrown at it.
With just five weeks before King Charles III's coronation, a British manufacturer of fine bone china is busy making 'God Save The King' commemorative plates and mugs for the historic occasion.
In a glittering splash of luxury fashion, Dior transformed Mumbai's grand, historic Gateway of India monument into a runway laden with celebrity, beauty and craftsmanship.
On March 30, 1923, exactly 100 years ago, the world's first continuous passenger cruise ship arrived back in New York City after completing a 130-day voyage.
CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani and former Canada Soccer president Nick Bontis defended Canada Soccer's controversial deal with Canadian Soccer Business on Thursday, telling a parliamentary committee that the contract provided the governing body with more guaranteed revenue that it had received previously.
Formula One officials confirmed on Friday that teams can no longer touch their cars with jacks during penalty pitstops in the wake of the Fernando Alonso controversy at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Russian and Belarusian players will be able to compete at Wimbledon as neutral athletes after the All England Club on Friday reversed its ban from last year.
Holding a sprint race on a street circuit at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is a "ludicrous" proposition which will cost Formula One teams when they "trash" their cars, Red Bull boss Christian Horner said.
Formula One officials confirmed on Friday that teams can no longer touch their cars with jacks during penalty pitstops in the wake of the Fernando Alonso controversy at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Red Bull principal Christian Horner has criticized the stricter interpretation of a rule that bans Formula One team employees from climbing pit wall for victory celebrations.
