The past few days have been daunting, due to a perfect storm of below-freezing temperatures, lack of power and broken promises of “brief” rolling blackouts. Once again firemen, grocery stores and homeless shelters haven’t hesitated to step up and help. But like the Titanic’s leadership not taking precautions to avoid the iceberg, those in charge of Texas’ power program allowed a painful and deadly scenario to take place for days with no end date in sight.
Allowing for the fact that there are certain locales (i.e., hospitals, first responder stations, etc.) absolutely requiring power, it seems that it would have been a wiser plan in recent days to shift the demand for power to include all. Instead, the state’s current plan allowed for some to have full-blown power throughout the storm and others to have a haphazard routine, if any.
It was as if Ercot had held a power provider lottery that most Texans didn’t know about or get to participate in.
In the days ahead, there is gonna be a lot of finger-pointing. That’s expected. But instead of ‘splaining that this is “the storm of the century,” the people responsible have to realize that the century is only a couple of decades old, and more than change is needed. Vision is demanded.
Instead of playing the 20/20 hindsight game, why does the Texas game plan seem to be, “When it happens, we’ll re-think our plans”? That’s a loser mentality.
As those from California and the Northeast move to the Lone Star State, we need to take the lead and show others how to weather such a situation — whether it is a “storm of the century” thanks to an Arctic invasion or a to-be-named Category 5 hurricane.
In other words, drop the excuses and put together a team that is equipped to prepare for 22nd century challenges.