More than 3.5 million Texans are still without power as the death toll from the winter storm which has wreaked havoc across the United States hit 23 Tuesday night.

The record-breaking cold weather claimed more lives Tuesday, including four family members who perished in a Houston-area house fire while using a fireplace to stay warm and a woman and a girl who died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning from a car running in a garage after their home in the city lost power. 

Three people were found dead after a tornado hit a seaside town in North Carolina; a Mississippi man died after losing control of his vehicle, which overturned on an icy road Monday night near Starkville. Two men found along Houston-area roadways likely died in subfreezing temperatures, law enforcement officials said.

In Harris County, Texas officials reported more than 300 carbon monoxide poisoning cases as people use BBQ pits and generators indoors in an effort to stay warm. Dr. Samuel Prater, a UTHealth emergency physician told The Houston Chronicle: ‘With that number of patients going in, it’s turning into a mini mass casualty event.’ 

In Galveston, the medical examiner’s office requested a refrigerated truck to expand body storage. 

The power breakdown sparked growing outrage and demands for answers over how Texas — whose Republican leaders as recently as last year taunted California over the Democratic-led state’s rolling blackouts — failed such a massive test of a major point of state pride: energy independence. 

Governor Gregg Abbot has demanded investigation into grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, as cities including San Antonio, Dallas and Austin were left to shoulder the brunt of a catastrophic power failure. 

Rep. Jeff Leach called it ‘ridiculous’ that five of the 15 ERCOT board members do not appear to live in Texas. 

He tweeted: ‘I’m filing legislation this session requiring all @ERCOT_ISO officers and directors to be Texas residents. Completely ridiculous and unacceptable that current ERCOT Board Chair lives in Michigan!’   

The state is the only one in continental U.S. that has its own power grid; it is not federally regulated. 

More bad weather, including freezing rain, was expected Tuesday night with a new winter storm expected in the next two days over the south and east of the country. 

The cold spell has already pushed snow cover to an all time high across the 48 states in North America. Official data shows snow currently covers 73.2 per cent of the area with an average depth of 6 inches; a year ago just 35.5 per cent was covered with an average of 4.6 inches of snow. 

Several cities had record lows: In Minnesota, the Hibbing/Chisholm weather station registered minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 39 degrees Celsius). Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to minus 26 Fahrenheit (minus 26 degrees Celsius). 

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on power grids straining to meet extreme demand for heat and electricity.  

Anger over Texas’ power grid failing in the face of a record winter freeze mounted Tuesday as millions of residents in the energy capital of the U.S. remained shivering with no assurances that their electricity and heat — out for 36 hours or longer in many homes — would return soon or stay on once it finally does.

‘I know people are angry and frustrated,’ said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who woke up to more than 1 million people still without power in his city. ‘So am I.’      

Amber Nichols, whose north Austin home has had no power since early Monday, said: ‘We’re all angry because there is no reason to leave entire neighborhoods freezing to death. This is a complete bungle.’

The number of outages in Texas at one point exceeded four million customers.

‘This is unacceptable,’ Gov. Abbott said, ‘Far too many Texans are without power and heat for their homes as our state faces freezing temperatures and severe winter weather.’

He added: ‘I have issued an executive order to review the preparations and decisions by ERCOT so we can determine what caused this problem and find long-term solutions.’  

By late Tuesday afternoon, ERCOT officials said some power had been restored, but they warned that even those gains were fragile and more outages were possible.

The grid began preparing for the storm a week ahead of time, but it reached a breaking point early Monday as conditions worsened and knocked power plants offline, ERCOT president Bill Magness said. 

Some wind turbine generators were iced, but nearly twice as much power was wiped out at natural gas and coal plants. Forcing controlled outages was the only way to avert an even more dire blackout in Texas, Magness said.

‘What we’re protecting against is worse,’ he said.

Still, Magness said ERCOT could not offer a firm timetable for when power might be fully restored and refused to take the blame for the ongoing crisis blaming it instead on ‘catastrophic conditions’.  

 The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Texas had requested 60 generators and that hospitals and nursing homes would get priority. 

Shelters were opened to accommodate more than 1,000 people around the state, FEMA said during a briefing. But even they weren’t spared from the outages, as Houston was forced to close two on Monday because of a loss in power.  

A Texas furniture store owner even opened his business as a shelter for those left without power.  

Jim ‘Mattress Mack’ McIngvale told ABC 13: ‘The cold is bitter, so we’re opening up the doors to Houstonians. Whether they want to stay for two hours until their power gets back on, or they want to stay for two days, we’re here for the community.’     

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s main power grid, is still struggling to restore power after failing to keep up with heightened demand. 

ERCOT provides electricity to about 90 percent of the state. 

Images showing empty office buildings in downtown Houston still lit up overnight has sparked outrage given the millions elsewhere without power, while hundreds have been forced to line up outside grocery stores in the freezing cold for supplies.

ERCOT CEO Magness they are ‘trying to get people’s power back on as quickly as possible’ but to do that they ‘need to be able to safely manage the balance of supply and demand on the grid’. 

He added: ‘The number one job of everybody here at ERCOT is to get people’s lights back on. We’re seeing demand in the winter nearly like we see at the top of the summer, when we’re all using our air conditioners.

‘We have seen nothing like this honestly in Texas, that has covered the state like the storm has. It increased demand to an extreme, extraordinary height, and then the storm also made it difficult for the supply to be provided.’ 

The spot price of wholesale electricity on the Texas power grid spiked more than 10,000% on Monday, according to data on the grid operator’s website. 

Real-time wholesale market prices on the ERCOT power grid were more than $9,000 per megawatt hour late Monday morning, compared with pre-storm prices of less than $50 per megawatt hour. 

ERCOT can be more susceptible to wholesale price spikes because it does not have a capacity market, which pays power plants to be on standby during peak demand and weather emergencies, for example. ERCOT’s model means consumers are not paying for generation that may never be called into action.

But early on Monday, ERCOT said extreme weather conditions caused many generating units – across all fuel types – to trip offline and become unavailable. That forced more than 30,000 megawatts of power generation off the grid, ERCOT said in a news release. 

The cold blast caused by winter storm Uri has wreaked havoc on the energy industry with Texas oil wells and refineries halted and natural gas pipelines and wind turbines frozen. 

Experts say the energy crisis essentially boils down to equipment freezing because power plants failed to properly winterize their hardware.  

Oil production in the country’s largest crude-producing state has plunged by more than two million barrels a day due to the storm, which has sent prices surging to $60 a barrel for the first time in a year. 

Wind turbines, which account for a fifth of the state’s energy, have frozen solid as temperatures plummet to a bitter -20F. 

Texas’s grid operator and the Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 states, imposed unprecedented rolling blackouts because the supply of reserve energy had been exhausted. Some utilities said they were starting blackouts, while others urged customers to reduce power usage, in a bid to prevent the collapse of their networks. 

Surging demand, driven by people trying to keep their homes warm and cold weather knocking some power stations offline, has pushed Texas’ system beyond the limits.

Dan Woodfin, a senior director of system operations at ERCOT, has defended preparations made by grid operators and described the demand on the system as record-setting. 

‘This weather event, it’s really unprecedented. We all living here know that,’ he said. 

‘This event was well beyond the design parameters for a typical, or even an extreme, Texas winter that you would normally plan for. And so that is really the result that we’re seeing.’ 

He said limited supplies of natural gas and frozen instruments at power plants are partly to blame for the blackouts.      

Experts trying to shed light on the crisis say it started to unfold when freezing temperatures that started at the beginning of the month led to record demand for electricity as Texans tried to heat their homes, which sent prices for heating fuels, including oil and natural gas, surging higher. 

ERCOT said demand reached a record of 69,150 megawatts on Sunday night, which is more than 3,200 MW higher than the previous winter peak in January 2018.

Experts have said that as people were turning up their heat, power plants and pipelines were freezing or being taken offline due to the temperatures.

At least five oil refineries in Texas have shut down operations because of the storm. Natural gas facilities and pipelines in Texas also closed after wellheads started to freeze up or get blocked with ice and compressors lost power.

Natural gas makes up about half of the state’s power generation. But much of what was available was used to enable people to heat their homes instead of generating more electricity.

Joshua Rhodes, of the University of Texas, told Gizmodo: ‘We don’t have the supply of gas that we normally do and we’re consuming gas in record numbers, which is also depressurizing the gas lines.

‘Natural gas power plants also require a certain pressure to operate, so if they can’t get that pressure, they also have to shut down. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong with the system.’

Rhodes said part of the issue is because the power grid in Texas is mostly prepared for heat waves rather than winter storms.

‘We just have this unprecedented strain on both our major energy grids that is just way beyond what they were designed to handle,’ he said.

‘About half of Texas homes heat their homes with natural gas, about half do it with electricity, and about half our power plants also consume natural gas to make that electricity.’   

Neil Chatterjee, a member of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, told Bloomberg the situation was critical.

‘I’ve been following energy markets and grid issues for a while, and I cannot recall an extreme weather event that impacted such a large swath of the nation in this manner – the situation is critical,’ he said.  

As nightfall threatened to plummet temperatures again into single digits in Texas, officials warned that homes in the state still without power would likely not have heat until at least Tuesday.  

‘Things will likely get worse before they get better,’ said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county of nearly 5 million people around Houston.  

Temperatures nosedived into the single-digits as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had already been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would come back on. 

In Dallas, officials told residents to refrain from calling 911 to report power outages as the 911 call center became overwhelmed with power outage calls.   

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas sought to cut power use in response to a winter record of 69,150 megawatts on Sunday evening, more than 3,200 MW higher than the previous winter peak in January 2018.

About 10,500 MW of customer load was shed at the highest point, enough power to serve approximately 2 million homes, it said, adding that extreme weather caused many generating units across fuel types to trip offline and become unavailable.

‘Controlled outages will continue through today and into early tomorrow, possibly all of tomorrow,’ Dan Woodfin, director of systems operations at ERCOT, told a briefing.

The storms knocked out nearly half the state’s wind power generation capacity on Sunday. Wind generation ranks as the second-largest source of electricity in Texas, accounting for 23% of state power supplies, ERCOT estimates.

Of the 25,000-plus MW of wind power capacity normally available in Texas, 12,000 MW were out of service on Sunday morning, an ERCOT spokeswoman said.

An emergency notice issued by the regulator urged customers to limit power usage and prevent an uncontrolled system-wide outage. 

House fire kills grandmother and three kids in Texas city while Houston mother and daughter are killed by carbon monoxide after using car to keep warm amid historic winter storm

Dangerous attempts to keep warm after losing power have killed at least six people in Texas amid a historic winter storm, with four perishing in a fire and two dying by carbon monoxide poisoning.

In Houston, a mother and daughter were killed after running a car inside a closed garage, while a blaze in Sugar Land killed a grandmother and her three young grandkids when they tried to use a fire to stay warm. 

Houston police were called to the home on the 8300 block of La Roche Lane for a welfare check early on Tuesday, and found a family of four suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

The mother and daughter were dead on the scene, while the father and son were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

‘Initial indications are that car was running in the attached garage to create heat as the power is out,’ the department said in a statement. ‘Cars, grills and generators should not be used in or near a building.’ 

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo called the deaths of the mother and daughter ‘heartbreaking.’ 

‘Please bundle up and be aware of the extreme danger carbon monoxide poses for us. Praying for this family,’ he added.

Officials also warn that sitting in a running car outdoors to stay warm can likewise pose a carbon monoxide danger, if the tailpipe is blocked by snow accumulation. 

Meanwhile, in Sugar Land, a city on the southwest outskirts of Houston, a grandmother and her three young grandchildren perished in a house fire on Tuesday.

Authorities believe that they were attempting to burn something indoors to keep warm after losing power, but the cause of the blaze remains under investigation. 

Sugar Land Fire and EMS spokesman Doug Adolph said that when firefighters arrived after the call at about 2am, the house was fully engulfed and the 41-year-old mother of the children and her female friend were outside of the home and suffering from burns. 

He said a responder had to restrain the mother from running back inside the house in a desperate attempt to save her children. Both women who survived have been taken to a hospital.

Officials say social media posts indicate that the family was using a fireplace to stay warm and may have also been using candles, according to KTRK-TV.  

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a midday news conference that 1.3 million people in his city remain without power. The city is looking for businesses that still have power to open their doors as warming centers.

‘It’s critically, critically important to get the power restored as quickly as possible. It’s priority number one!’ Turner said.

Robyn Harrison, a mother of two in the Houston suburb of Bellaire, told DailyMail.com that her family has been without power since 4am on Tuesday, and is using their home’s gas fireplace to keep warm.

‘We have no electricity. No water. The water main broke. No cell service,’ she said. ‘It’s been in the low 20s and teens.’

When her husband Keith Harrison drove to the family’s business to pick up a generator, he discovered a burst pipe at the offices, she said. 

For now, Robyn Harrison said that residents in her neighborhood were focused on surviving the historic winter storm safely — but that they would have hard questions for ERCOT officials once the crisis passes. 

‘Once we get power and water and all the other creature comforts, then people will be pissed,’ she said. ‘I think people will be irate when they have hundreds if not thousands of plumbing repairs.’ 

Aerial images show trail of destruction left by a tornado which killed three people and left 10 injured as winter storm Uri continues to hammer the US

Aerial photos show the trail of destruction left by a tornado which killed three people and left 10 injured as winter storm Uri continues to hammer the United States. 

In the dramatic photos, houses are seen completely decimated to the foundation after a tornado swept through a seaside town in North Carolina. Dozens of homes have been destroyed with some left barely standing with their roofs ripped off. 

Cars are pictured with their windows and sunroofs blown out while residents look on surveying the damage.

The National Weather Service said the tornado was rated as an EF-3 with estimated wind speeds of 160 miles per hour after it touched down just before midnight. 

The tornado, spawned by a line of thunderstorms associated with a sprawling winter storm that has brought frigid temperatures as far south as Texas, swept through a golf course community and another rural area late around 11.50pm on Monday.

Ed Conrow, director of Brunswick County Emergency Management, said on Tuesday that first responders had completed search and rescue operations and there were no reports of missing persons as of noon, WWAY-TV reported. 

All of the victims lived in the Ocean Ridge Plantation neighborhood in Ocean Isle Beach, Conrow said. The victims have not yet been identified.

The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office said officials were awaiting daybreak to sift through the rubble of damaged homes.

‘There is a significant amount of damage, both structural and debris,’ the sheriff’s office said in a statement.   

Governor Roy Cooper said rescue operations were continuing on Tuesday.

One resident, Sharon Benson, 63, said the roof of her home was damaged and her garage door was blown off. 

She said her windows were shattered and nearby trees were also uprooted. 

‘The sky lit up and there was a lot of pop-pop-popping. And the loud thunder. And then it sounded like a train, a freight train coming through. The roar of a freight train. That’s when all the damage occurred,’ she said. 

Elsewhere as a result of the winter storm, millions of people remained without power amid subfreezing temperatures and authorities warned of treacherous travel conditions in many states. 

The massive winter storm that overwhelmed a Southwestern power grid and immobilized the Southern Plains was carrying heavy snow and freezing rain eastward, with bad weather spreading through into New England and the Deep South, the National Weather Service said. 

The storm system left behind record-setting cold temperatures with wind-chill warnings extending from Canada into Mexico.  

The worst US outages were in Texas, affecting more than 4 million homes and businesses Tuesday.  

More than 250,000 people also lost power across parts of Appalachia, and another quarter-million were still without electricity following an ice storm in northwest Oregon, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outage reports. Another 4 million people lost power in Mexico. 

The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states, imposed rolling two-hour blackouts to east the extreme demand for heat and electricity. It said the outages were ‘a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.’ 

CHICAGO — Parts of Chicago could see another 2 or 3 inches of snow Tuesday evening, potentially delaying the plowing of side streets and slowing the city’s recovery from the nearly 18 inches that fell over the past day.

John Tully, commissioner of the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation, said crews hope to turn their attention to the city’s side streets Tuesday evening, but added the arrival of new snow could force plows and salt spreaders to stay on arterial streets and Lake Shore Drive.

“We will be moving into all 50 wards provided there is no additional snow,” Tully said at a Tuesday news conference to update the city’s response to the snowfall and cold.

Tully also said so much snow has fallen, the city will use backhoes and semis to haul it to huge piles around the city, including the parking lots at Guaranteed Rate Field. He warned parents to keep kids away from the piles, noting it is hard for truck drivers to see children playing there — and the piles are filled with debris, including lawn chairs from displaced dibs.

“Crews are working around the clock relocating the snow to predetermined” areas around the city, he said. Moving it out of neighborhoods will help keep plows from burying parked cars when they eventually turn to side streets, he said.

RELATED: Snowed In? Here’s How To Get Shoveling Help In Chicago

Building owners and property management companies are also being asked to shovel bus stops around the city to help the CTA get back on schedule. Heavy snow on switches at the Howard Terminal, meanwhile, caused Yellow and Purple line disruptions.

As for the city’s snow-clogged alleys, don’t expect city plows to come to the rescue.

“If we start plowing in alleyways, you start collapsing garage doors ‘cuz there’s nowhere for that snow to go,” Tully said.

Instead, Streets and San will have garbage trucks “tracking” the alleys, creating paths through the alleys. They’ll also work to get back on schedule for garbage collecting, including working overtime on Saturday. Many of the garbage truck drivers are the same people driving plows, so crews have fallen behind during the storm, Tully said.

Credit: Kelly Bauer/Block Club Chicago

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