A Cold Week in Cactus Country

It’s 54 degrees in my apartment. That’s12 for those of you in Places Centigrade, where a drop in a degreemakes an actual difference. The water’s been shut off. It was on mostof the day Monday, then it was off, on, off, and on again. For now atleast, the taps have spoken, and the other side beat us out.

I’ll address it now because I know you’re wondering. We filled our camping jug when the taps were on so we’re okay with water to drink, and we’ve got a garbage bin filled with melted snow in the bathroom that we thought would help us flush, but which in practice only slightly obfuscates our bathroom business. Really, the worst part of the whole poo poo pee pee thing is that our bum gun is offline.

We haven’t lost power, though I can’tsay why. I don’t think we’re on the same power grid as a hospital ornursing home. The car dealerships along 35 are lit up like it’sfucking Christmas. Despite that, the heating hasn’t been able tomuscle past 54 degrees today, same as yesterday.

A Basically Empty Nest

We’re lucky. All around Austin, it’snearing a point where some people might actually consider killing toget themselves into our situation. Scheduled rolling blackouts (’20minutes, tops’) went into effect in the wee hours of Monday morning,and for huge swaths of the city, the power never came back. Today isThursday. Four days now of people in a major American city no power,heating, or access to water in 25 degree temps outside.

Even when power comes back, myprediction is that the water won’t. Pipes here aren’t insulated andall across the city they have been bursting in their thousands. Apipe burst on the first floor of the building I live in. A guy I workwith lives in a nice condominium group, apartment number nine. Pipesburst in eight and ten.

The massive amount of water sheddingfrom the system has kamikazed water pressure everywhere hence theshutting off the grid hence my empty taps. But again, it’s not sobad. The same thing happened at some of the hospitals in Austin.That’s much worse.

Trapped Bug

And I had warning. Before it went out,the water sputtered and fought the good fight. I knew it was goingand could act accordingly. For other people in Austin, the city-wideboil notice is about as helpful as a winning lotto ticket to a deadguy. A little too goddamn late, wouldn’t you say?

I’m sure you’ve read about this.

Growing up in Minnesota, you hearstories about people in the south. We passed chittery gossip back andforth, telling tall tales of schools closed after half an inch ofnothing much. How we laughed, the snowbanks brushing our shoulders!Those southern weaklings couldn’t manage the tough stuff like wecould. How soft they must be.

I’ll tell you something, you get realsoft real quick when there’s no salt on the road. No sand on yourapartment steps. No snowplow or shovel or window scraper for miles inany direction. The infrastructure here just isn’t set up to handlethis.

Death Trap on the Back Stairs

Texas exceptionalism is a phrase youhear sometimes. We’ve seen the shirt, ‘most likely to secede.’ Weknow Texas is a Republic, evenif we don’t know what that means exactly or how it’s any differentfrom say, Maine or Hawaii. Isn’t Hawaii a kingdom? Or is it aqueendom?

Wellhere’s what I’ve learned from the crash course I’ve been living sinceSunday: Texas’s grid is an example of exceptionalism in action. Texasdoesn’t share electricity so we can’t exactly ask for it when we needit. The grid was developed at a time before the world had emphysemaand people had a choirboy’s chance in church of actually predictingthe weather accurately. The folks in charge of setting the thing upset it up for the weather they grew up with. They didn’t count onextreme fluctuation because they didn’t think they needed to andbecause weatherizing shit costs money, goddamnit, good money thatthey earned fair and square.

Thelast time the grid collapsed, in 2011, they waited for the thaw andthen went their merry way because weatherizing shit costs money,goddamnit, and all the rest and they’ll probably do the same thingagain after this. Why? Because the Texas energy sector is deregulatedall to hell and half the Electric Reliability Council of Texas(ERCOT) (the people in charge of the grid) live in fucking Michiganor Idaho or something. Not here anyway.

Speakingof which Ted Cruz just flew to Cancun. Unbefuckinglievable. Forgiveme if I misspelled that, I’m working my keyboard with gloves.

Sothat’s the situation as I understand it. I’m lucky. We got groceriesover the weekend before things went Arctic, so we’re okay on food.The heater stalled out on 54 which is better than the 30 degrees itis outside. I’ve got blankets and a wife and a cat I can cuddle, andthe temperature drop isn’t, for the moment, for us anyway, dangerous.We’ve still got power. Again, no clue how, but I’m certainly notcomplaining. We’ll have to wait and see about the water. We’re goodfor the night and tomorrow and there’s snow outside if that runs out.Maybe the grocery stores aren’t as bad as they say.

Working and Being Cold

Really,the thing that surprises me isn’t the weather. Watch DavidAttenborough’s Witness Statement and you’ll understand thatunpredictable weather is the new normal. It isn’t the mismanagementof the grid. Watch any Texas politician flap their cowhide gums inWashington and you’ll see that’s a foregone conclusion. The thingthat surprises me is how close it all feels to falling apart. Leninsaid every society is three meals away from chaos. I think I’mstarting to agree.

Look, the ‘facts’ I stated above are my best understanding of the situation. These I pulled from newspaper articles and screen scrolls in the gym (which is heated which is funnily enough incredibly motivating) and an episode of the Daily. Really, I don’t know much about how a grid works, or how my heater makes heat or how my water taps stay wet. And when something like this happens and leadership disappears, you become real aware real quick of how little you know.

Thetruth is, rumors flying like grackles. People are cold and hungry andthirsty and pissed off and they’re directing their anger at anyoneand everyone they think might be to blame. For now, most of the angerseems to be directed at politicians.

Forgood reason.

I feel gutted when I think about the amount of people with flooded, freezing apartments. When I think of people sleeping in their cars or the homeless population, waiting this out fuck-knows-where. And I’m pissed too. Hotels down here, not even the nice ones, shitty ones, were charging $700 per night. The skyline was lit up after we were all told to conserve. Clearly, the folks in charge didn’t make appropriate preparations.

Common Room at my Apartment, Locked, Empty, with a Fireplace Roaring

Everyoneseems to expect things to go back to normal on Saturday when theweather thaws. I hope they’re right. The last time I was in asituation like this, after a cyclone in Airlie Beach, cleanup was amonths-long process. Will a thaw fix the broken machinery on thegrid? Will it repair all the busted water pipes? Pretty sure that’snot how warm weather works.

Allowme a quick rant. The future we’re barreling into isn’t a future wecreated. It was built by robber barons who stole everything theycould of value from the environment, and brinkmanship on the part ofpoliticians determined to protect profits and keep rich dickheadssweet because the rich dickheads keep them elected. So this kind ofthing is going to happen again. Probably, it’s going to happen a lot.Corporations will keep skullfucking the planet and politicians aregoing to continue to let them and preventable things like a city-wideblackout and water shortage and people freezing to death and gettingcarbon monoxide poisoning from heating their house with their gasstove will happen in more places too.

I’mnot saying society is going to collapse. Not yet anyway.

But ifI were a betting man in charge of a major American city, I would sureas shit be stockpiling food. Because it seems to me that people arestarting to feel like they’re missing their meal.

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