A few minutes before the store opened its doors, a manager stepped outside and warned those waiting in line that supplies inside were low: No produce, no baked goods, not much canned food.
“We haven’t had a delivery in four days,” he said.
In Harris County, the largest in Texas with nearly 5 million residents, more than 33,000 homes remained without power Thursday and thousands of people didn't have access to clean water, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top executive. When the power went out at Harris County Public Health Department and then the generator failed, officials had to rescue more than 8,000 COVID-19 vaccines, she said.
“It’s definitely a scramble,” Hidalgo said. “And it’s something that’s going to take us a few days to recover from.”
Texas officials have ordered 7 million people across the state to boil tap water before drinking it, following days of record-low temperatures that shuttered water treatment plants and froze pipes. At least two Austin-area hospitals lost water pressure and heat and one was forced to evacuate some patients. More than three dozen deaths across the U.S. over the past few days have been blamed on the extreme weather.
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