Texas enters "major disaster status", with food and drinking water shortage

The State of Texas, located in the southern part of the United States, experienced a rise in temperature on February 20 after encountering a rare winter storm. However, local supplies of food and drinking water are still tight. In addition, prices of some life supplies and electricity are also rising suddenly and sharply.

By monitoring the national electricity supply website in the US, by the afternoon of February 20, there were over 54,000 households with power outage throughout Texas, which was a drastic decline from February 19. However, there were still over 150,000 households with water outage or had abnormal tap water quality. Sources with the Texas Environmental Quality Bureau said that water supply conditions were still improving.

By February 20, food supplies in Texas had also not returned to normal. Instant foods were sold out at big supermarkets, meats , eggs, dairy products, vegetables and fruits had an evident lack of stock. Many grocery stores were also selling bottled water at a limited quantity.

At the press conference held on February 20, Texas authorities stated that Texas had ordered 10 million bottles of bottled water and over 5 million portions of instant food, which the government would give out to all those in need. In addition, Texas had 331 centers for protection against the cold which were still open. In Houston, Dallas, and other major cities in Texas, for the last few days, many groups were providing free bottled water and food for citizens.

When Texas residents were still worried about food and drinking water, some families had received sky-high electricity bills in surprise. A northern Texas resident told Fox News that he is a client of Griddy Energy Company, during the winter storm, while the entire family tried to save electrical energy as much as possible, the electricity expenditure over the five days was as high as 17,000 dollars. Another Houston resident stated that her electricity bill for the previous week was 5,500 dollars.

Griddy Energy Company implements floating electricity pricing. Before the winter storm, the company suggested consumers to switch to other energy suppliers to avoid high electricity charges. However, many consumers find that other suppliers were not taking in new consumers at the time, or take many days to complete proceedings.

Aside from sky-high electricity prices, recently, Texans have felt clear rise in the prices of hotel, gas, and even bottled water. On February 20, gas prices in major Texan cities had risen 10 to 20 percent compared to before the winter storm. Other reports found that some fraudulent sellers were splitting entire boxes of bottled water and selling them separately. The price of each bottle was two or three times their original price.

Officials have expressed that certain fraudulent sellers were using the natural disaster as an opportunity to make exorbitant profits. Houston opened the price report system on February 17, and received 450 complaints in the first 20 hours.

According to Texas law, randomly elevating the prices of food, medicine, gas and other necessities is an illegal behavior. The government calls on residents to keep reporting on the phenomenon of forcing up the price.

This rarely seen cold current has directly and indirectly caused the death of dozens of people. Specialists predict that as time goes by, related death toll will continue to go up.

Furthermore, extreme weathers are causing COVID-19 vaccine supply and inoculation in Texas to experience a large-scale delay. Since the accumulation of snow and ice led to the suspension of vaccine transportation, many vaccine inoculation centers have been forced to close, and some reserved inoculations have been canceled. The U.S. Department of Health said that only when road conditions improve can inoculation work resume.

The US government declared certain regions in Texas to have entered “major disaster status”. The federal government’s rescue workers and supplies are arriving in succession.

Contributed by: Gao Lu, Xinhua News Agency Houston Branch