Austin residents cope with extended work outages

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Austin. The Haggard families seeking a distraction from their still-dark homes took refuge Saturday morning at the Central Library in downtown, where Jennifer Parker and Justin Hawird watched their two young children play with Legos and crayons in welcoming warmth.

Arlo and Vernon, ages 5 and 2, were without power at their Austin home for three days, leaving their exhausted parents to seek an escape.

“We woke up and started looking for warm places to go,” Hawird said. The day began with a trip to Whole Foods for breakfast, then to the playground where the kids could get some outdoor exercise, and finally to the library for another distraction.

Although crews relentlessly connected customers on Saturday, more than 66,000 homes and businesses were still without power by evening after a mid-week ice storm wreaked havoc on the city’s electrical system.

The unlucky ones spent the day throwing away hundreds of dollars worth of tainted food, daydreaming about hot showers, and even burying dead pet fish. Parker and Hawird and other families with kids have just spent most of the week struggling to keep the kids entertained as schools are closed and choices are limited.

“Our house is in complete ruins, there are containers of food everywhere,” Parker said, although for Arlo, food to go in the last few days has been the best part without electricity.

Despite their fatigue, Parker and Hawird are veterans when it comes to surviving crashes. When the 2021 freeze forced the family to leave their home, Vernon was a baby when they sought shelter at the University of Texas Hawird office.

Breastfeeding without a working refrigerator added to the challenge that both parents were happy to avoid this time around.

Line crews cope with a heavy workload

Half an oak tree, split in the middle, lay in the yard of a ranch-style house in the North Austin area, while Austin Energy workers in neon yellow safety vests cleared branches and prepared to reconnect the power line.

Saturday’s blue skies and light breeze belied harsh winter conditions that covered Austin’s millions of trees with a thick layer of ice that brought down branches on power lines, depriving families of light and warmth.

The burden of restoring power to hundreds of thousands of homes across the city fell to crews working through the night to assess each outage and make necessary repairs. Knowing families were without power for up to four days, crews worked as quickly as possible under the weight of residents’ expectations.

Forrest Gifford, head of the power distribution group at Austin Energy, said the ice storm caused the most catastrophic damage he had seen in his 15-year career. Gifford said fallen trees, live wires and other hazards made the job extremely slow and difficult.

With the prospect of many more miles of power lines to be inspected and repaired, the long hours took their toll.

“We’re a tight-knit group of guys and we make sure we’re safe…” Gifford said, his voice clinging as he reflected on the 16-18 hour work day before continuing. “We try to take care of each other at work and outside of work, and our families are important to us.”

Austin residents are expressing growing frustration at the city’s lack of connectivity and the pace at which power is being restored. Austin’s expansive tree canopy, usually a point of pride, turned against homeowners when ice buildup caused more damage than the city’s public utility expected.

But residents’ irritation at the city’s reaction didn’t extend to the crew’s efforts on Saturday.

Gifford and his fellow linemen were greeted with donuts and thanks from grateful neighbors who stopped by to look at the work.

Hoping for the kindness of neighbors

Police officer Perry Jr., 79, was reunited with his niece on the front lawn of his home on Saturday afternoon after nearly four days without contact with his family.

The retired keeper lives alone in South Austin and said family members across the country have been trying to get through since Wednesday, when the power went out at his house and his cell phone died. Finally, they sent Perry’s niece to check on him.

Perry said his neighbors made sure he was okay, handing out Jimmy John sandwiches to the neighborhood’s residents, and doing joint HEB runs to resupply spoiled food.

Despite the generosity of his neighbors, Perry said he had been short on food for the past few days and relied mostly on cold cuts. He said he was disappointed with the city that the power outages had been going on for so long.

“The only thing I have is water,” Perry said. “No one should go through this.”

Luckily, running without electricity wasn’t a problem for Perry. He said he read the paper every day, and it wasn’t until Wednesday that he ran out of business when the Austin American Statesman couldn’t get it to his house.

Majestic trees took the blow of an ice storm

The blankets and sheets that were once used to keep the Taylor family’s outdoor plants from ice—with varying degrees of success—were draped along their mesh fence as the family of three completed a day of yard work and tree cleaning.

Navwab Taylor said it was heartbreaking to see more than 200-year-old trees fall in front of their yards and backyards.

“At night, when everything is freezing, you just hear them fall,” she said, taking a break from lining up twigs and twigs along the curb.

Taylor said she and husband Aaron got creative in keeping their 11-year-old son Leo busy when school was canceled for most of the week. Their days consisted of playing the ukulele, solving puzzles, and visiting Navwab’s office to charge their electronics.

“It’s great to have one day off from school,” Taylor said. “But when it’s Thursday, Friday, and now we don’t know if school will be on Monday, it starts to tire everyone.”

However, according to Taylor, the family was lucky that they had time to prepare before the storm hit. They stocked up on gallons of water, hand warmers, and battery-powered reading lights, which they also shared with neighbors.

The storm, she said, forced her family to take a fresh look at the situation.

“You don’t realize how much you rely on electricity and the Internet until you have them,” Taylor said. “When you think of people in other parts of the world who are without heat and electricity for months, you realize, oh, this is nothing.”

Loss of food means loss of money

Sitting in the cold living room of his South Austin home, Robert Luve packed two refrigerators full of perishables to take to his son’s house before they went bad. It was too late for other foods that had gone bad in his fridge after four days without electricity.

“The city won’t pay me for groceries,” Luve said in an upset voice. “It will be paid out of my social security.”

Louvet said he and his wife had no problem entertaining themselves during the blackout. Although their living room is crammed with hundreds of DVD movies – a collection rivaled only by the couple’s home library – they spent a week reading in the home they’ve owned for over 35 years.

Low temperatures didn’t bother them much, Louvet said. “We’re used to him being a little nimble.” Their house was built in 1952, and although it lacks thermal insulation compared to nearby newer homes, Luve said they love their old gas-fired home, which protected them during a storm.

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