Politics and false state pride caused worst disaster in Texas history

Texans lining up for propane fuel amid Texas snow calamity. SCREENSHOT

The midnight scene was apocalyptic at the height of the shocking ice storm that blanketed most of Texas, a state that is geographically bigger than California and normally very seldom sees snow. There was ghastly silence as thick snow and ice covered the cities and fields. More than 4 million people at one time or another were without power to light and heat their homes. Before the water supply was cut off, water pressure was very low, which made the water undrinkable. People struggled to survive, boiling water if they could find some.

The 600-bed homeless shelter of the Salvation Army near downtown Dallas was full. Hospitals were crippled. Prisons could not flush their toilets. Many, including small children, died from hypothermia. Of those who, in desperation turned on their cars’ engines to get some heat, some died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Others tore down wooden parts of their house and burned them in their fireplaces along with furniture and babies’ cribs for warmth.

The temperature in North, East and Central Texas dipped to as low as 3 degrees F., which felt like minus-10 degrees, bursting pipes and sending roofs crashing from sheer weight of solid ice. Forty people are reported dead. My son Amiel in Austin, whose camper’s ingenuity helped him survive, did not have power for 45 hours and had to evacuate on the fourth day of the blizzard. There was no escape as the icy roads were treacherous and many flights at the airports were grounded.

In terms of destruction, according to insurance companies’ estimates, the cost of this catastrophe may exceed the $125 billion cost of Hurricane Harvey as the worst natural disaster in Texas history. It was a double whammy for the beleaguered Texans, as the lone star state was still suffering from the pandemic when the ice storm nightmare came. The crisis also delayed the distribution of the anti-COVID vaccines.

Politicians are to blame

While the unpredictable ice storm could not be prevented as the reality of ‘Climate Change’ has turned the earth upside down, raining ice, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes in the most unlikely places, the destruction and suffering in Texas could have been prevented if the shameless and proud politicians had not bungled their jobs and abused their authority.  In the much-touted “Energy Capital of the World,” it was a huge embarrassment to state officials for their private and unregulated state power grid to fail and cause so much suffering.

The historic energy failure problem finds its roots in the early 2000s when then Governor Rick Perry was unsuccessfully running for President. In his arrogant swagger, Perry boasted that Texas was so independently rich and self-reliant that if it decided to secede from the Union, it would be richer and more powerful than the remaining states. The Texas Constitution, in fact, has a provision that it could secede from the Union if the citizens of Texas so decide.

Be that as it may, doing so and declaring independence from the U.S. would be foolhardy and may even be disastrous, as the last winter storm debacle has demonstrated. The phrase “no man is an island,” which expresses the idea that human beings do badly when isolated from others and need to be part of a community in order to thrive, rings true here. No state can be totally autonomous and ignore the rest of the country and expect to thrive. The 50 united states have symbiotic relationships with one another, whether they like it or not.

Texas suffered from worst natural disaster in its history. SCREENSHOT

Nonetheless, Rick Perry and the state Republicans managed to do things on their own with sheer disregard and scorn for common rules and regulations that naturally have to be coordinated by the Federal government. Perry even went further and proposed the abolition of the Energy department. Thus, Texas’ own independent power grid called ERCOT (for Electric Reliability Council of Texas) was created, “to avoid and circumvent Federal guidelines and regulations.”

While the rest of the country is powered by two interdependent national grids, interconnected to prevent major failures in any one state, the Texas grid stands on its own, unable to be backed up by the national grids when needed. The proud and myopic creators of ERCOT never imagined that their system would fail. “How can the energy capital of the world fail?” bragged the state officials. Well it did, and it failed miserably.

Some years ago when the Federal energy officials warned Texas to winterize its electricity grid to prevent freezing up, Governor  Greg Abbott and the ERCOT managers ignored the warning. “It never gets that cold in Texas,” said Abbott defiantly. And while people suffered and froze last week, former governor Rick Perry arrogantly said: “The people of Texas would prefer to not have power and water for several days than to accept Federal regulations.” False state pride! Speak for yourselves, governors. Tell that to people whose parents or young children froze to death. Tell that to families whose houses flooded or burned to the ground when the firefighters could not get water from anywhere.

To add insult to injury, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick blamed the consumers who complained of $7,000 to $10,000 electricity bills this way: “That’s the price the people pay for gambling on the state’s low power rates, they failed to read the fine print.” This is the same Dan Patrick who had suggested in the early days of the pandemic that elderly Texans sacrifice themselves to Coronavirus for the sake of the economy. Unbelievable! These are the people that you voted into office, folks. If they are to blame, the ultimate blame points in your direction!

While the people suffered, the unscrupulous politicians resorted to blame game instead of coming up with solutions. Governor Abbott and Fox News were quick to blame the Democrats’ alternative energy sources (wind, solar and water) and “the Democrats’ plans to eliminate fossil fuel (coal and oil) altogether,” which is decades away if it ever comes to fruition. Texas, traditionally, is largely fossil-fuel dependent and will be for a long time.

Abbott’s feeble attempts to blame clean energy sources for the outages were contradicted by his own Energy department who said it was the 180 gas-fueled, non-winterized power generators that failed to handle the blizzard. The wind turbine-powered sector of the grid is a tiny, almost inconsequential contributor to the main grid. And it is not true that renewable energy will not work in Texas. It is in fact solar and wind turbine-harvested energy that are saving the northwestern states and Canada’s power grid from freezing up. Their systems have never failed.

Democrat leaders Beto O’Rourke and Joaquin Castro promptly rebuked the governor and placed “100%  of the blame on him and other Republican officials for sheer negligence,  incompetence and unpreparedness.” Texas has been under Republican control for decades and as it turned out, the state’s own unique Power Grid was woefully inadequate, resulting in the serial failures of their massive generators last week. The natural gas plants were frozen.

Gov. Abbott’s knee-jerk reaction was to fire the ERCOT executives and order an investigation, but he had no immediate concrete solutions to offer except to wait for the cold weather to turn around. Texas senator Ted Cruz said he had no defense, and instead of using his authority and position to assist the victims, decided to flee to warm Cancun with his family.

Instinctively, the Biden administration quickly declared a major emergency in Texas, expedited access to Federal funds and instructed FEMA to distribute generators and to provide assistance including food and supplies to endangered families. The president visited Texas last Friday to personally assess the damage wrought by the storm and to visit vaccination centers and the Houston Food Bank, the biggest in the country.

Other states also reached out with whatever relief they could gather for the suffering people in Texas. The much-maligned NY congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez raised millions of dollars and personally delivered badly-needed goods to the victims. Beto O-Rourke and his army of phone bankers called more than 200,000 senior citizens and his volunteers delivered whatever the old folks needed.

Sadly, this is what happens when national crises and emergencies are politicized by self-absorbed politicians and proud states decide to act independently at their own peril. The people suffer.

 “Flyin’ Ted Cruz”

We Texans have the misfortune of having at least one senator who is narcissistic and does not really care about the people that he represents. This has been true about this man for a long time, but it became obvious last week when he decided to abandon his suffering constituents and quietly fled and flew to sunny Cancun. When he was caught during his now infamous “walk of shame” at Houston International Airport, he blamed his daughter for his godawful decision to move to $300-a-night Ritz Carlton with a warm private beach and heated swimming pools. For this indiscretion, he was pilloried and satirized by the freezing Texans and the entire nation. His clueless defenders on Fox News claimed that there was nothing for Cruz to do if he had stayed in Texas, but that was only because he decided to do nothing.

Texas’ political leaders played blame game for failures during the snow storm. SCREENSHOT

On the other hand, his opponent Beto O’Rourke and his team of volunteers organized phone banks and made more than 200,000 calls to senior citizens and came out to deliver food, water and blankets to them. O’Rourke and  NY Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez raised a total of $5 million for the victims of the Texas blizzard. While the Republican governor and senators were shocked into inaction and passing blame, it was the new President Joe Biden who quickly mobilized FEMA to deliver portable generators and supplies. And it was the Democrat mayors and city managers of Texas cities who became the heroes on the ground, saving the communities and preventing more deaths. President Biden also visited Texas last Friday to personally survey the destruction and secure first-hand the state’s needs.

Since he became senator, Ted Cruz has devolved into one of the most loathed politicians in Washington. Obsessed with a burning ambition to become president, in his first term, he single-handedly shut down the government with an ill-advised filibuster against Obamacare.

.During the 2016 primary, presidential candidate Ted Cruz called Donald Trump “most unfit and absolute worst person to run for the White House.” Trump countered and gave him the sobriquet “Lyin’ Ted” which stuck, denigrated his wife Heidi for her looks and accused his Cuban father of co-conspiring in the assassination of JFK. Instead of fighting back, the opportunist Ted Cruz licked Trump’s boots and became his avid defender. After last year’s election, he led Trump’s failed crusade to overturn the elections and helped stir the January 6 insurrectionists into laying siege on the US capitol and coming close to executing Vice President Mike Pence and the congressional leaders.

Fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said this about Ted Cruz: “If Ted Cruz is shot on the floor of the Senate and a trial is held in the Senate, no senator will vote to convict the shooter. Ted Cruz has no friends in the Senate.”  Only in Texas, a deep red state, would such an unprincipled politician survive. I wish we could trade Ted Cruz in for someone with conscience, empathy and integrity. Those in other states reading this, you can have Ted Cruz anytime. No charge. And we will pay for shipping!

Gus Mercado is a 40-year resident of Texas and a well-known Fil-Am business and civic leader in Dallas, Texas. He founded the popular Filipino Leaders Coalition of North Texas (FILCON).. He is a recipient of the Presidential BANAAG award for outstanding community service. Reactions to this article may be sent to [email protected].