A huge winter storm has swept through the central United States since the start of the week, covering three-quarters of the country with snow and depriving millions of people of electricity and heat.
Snow fell in the Great Plains, but also in the Mississippi Valley and on the Gulf of Mexico coast, where it is extremely rare.
The mercury has occasionally dropped to -18 ° C, and Austin's temperatures were lower than those of Anchorage, Alaska.
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At least thirty people have died across the country as a result of weather conditions, in car crashes on icy roads, or in domestic accidents while trying to heat themselves.
Emergency state
Texas, where snow and low temperatures are unusual, suffered massive power cuts.
As of Thursday, 500,000 people were still without electricity, against some 4 million at the start of the week.
The largely independent electrical distribution system was affected both by the cold, which reduced production capacity, and by the high demand, which forced load shedding measures.
A state of emergency has been declared and the energy distribution agency has asked residents to reduce their consumption.
The cold also damaged the water distribution pipes, and power cuts shut down the pumping systems.
Authorities have recommended that 7 million people, or a quarter of the population of the second largest state in the union, boil tap water before drinking it.
Hospitals have also had to deal with water and heating cuts.
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The subject sparked a political debate in this energy producing state.
Republican elected officials explained that the power cuts were due to the unreliability of renewable energies.
"It shows how dangerous the Green New Deal is for the United States,"
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Fox News Tuesday, referring to the Biden Administration's program for energy sources. renewable.
"Wind and solar power accounted for over 10% of our electricity supply, which put Texas in a shortage situation ... It just shows that fossil fuels are needed,"
he explained, implicating wind turbines blocked by frost.
Rick Perry, former governor of Texas and former energy secretary to Donald Trump, wrote on his blog that
"Texans are prepared to go without electricity for more than three days to prevent the federal government from meddling of their business ”
.
Federal authorities called for help
The Texan Democrats, for their part, accused the deregulation of the energy market and the lack of investment by private suppliers to deal with crisis situations.
Power plants and fuel distribution systems, including pipelines, were not designed to operate in low temperatures, rare in Texas.
They also explained that the extreme weather conditions, linked according to them to climate change, plead in favor of renewable energies.
Power cuts have occurred in other states.
A state of emergency has been declared in Oregon, on the Pacific coast, and problems have been recorded in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
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Several states have called on the federal authorities for help.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has sent a message to President Joe Biden asking for a presidential declaration of emergency.
“Extreme winter weather conditions including low temperatures, snow, sleet and freezing rain have affected many areas of Louisiana, due to power outages and water outages statewide. . "
A million inhabitants are still without drinking water, and several thousand do not have electricity.
In New Orleans, power cuts affected pumping stations, and fire trucks delivered water to hospitals, where bottled water was distributed to patients and staff.
The Democratic Administration, which intends to devote up to $ 2 trillion to investments in infrastructure and renewable energies, and to the modernization of the American electricity grid, insisted on the urgency of these measures.
"The disaster in Texas and other states reminds us that the vital infrastructure of our country are vulnerable to extreme climate events, and we can not close our eyes to the investments necessary to protect them,"
said the president the Senate Committee on the Environment, Democratic Senator from Delaware, Tom Carper.