According to U.S. media reports, so far, winter storms have killed 76 people in many states across the United States, about half of whom are in Texas. As of the 21st, water and power outages in some areas were still continuing.
In Texas, the worst-hit state, Governor Abbott, said on the 21st that the power outage caused by extreme cold weather still affects 30,000 people in Texas, and authorities are still repairing the local power system.
Houston Mayor Turner said on the same day that Texas’ electricity problems were predictable and preventable.
In addition, due to winter storms, water pipes in many parts of Texas burst due to extreme cold weather, and the supply of tap water in some areas was interrupted, affecting more than 14 million people.
Local media reported that many Texas people had to queue up at designated places to collect drinking water. According to employees of a drinking water delivery facility in Dallas, the drinking water collection point has distributed thousands of bottles of drinking water to local people over the weekend.
In addition to Texas, in Virginia and Mississippi, more than 30,000 families and merchants are still out of power, and the supply of tap water in some areas is interrupted.
Officials said that the old water supply facilities in many parts of the United States did not take extreme weather into account at the beginning of the design, which led to an unrepeable situation when extreme weather came.
Texas refinery shut down production and emitted a large amount of industrial exhaust gas.
According to media reports, several large refineries in Texas temporarily stopped production due to the extreme cold weather affecting the supply of natural gas and electricity, but they burned up a large amount of industrial exhaust for protective equipment.
According to the Texas Department of Environmental Quality, the five largest refineries in Texas have discharged more than 150 tons of pollutants, including benzene, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide, in the past week.
Some factories’ emissions far exceed emission standards, and environmental groups have called for the Texas government to modify its policies so that relevant enterprises should not discharge freely on the grounds of protective equipment with impunity.
