Texas power outages below 500,000 but water woes persists

AUSTIN, Texas -- Power was restored to more homes and businesses in Texas on Thursday after a deadly blast of winter this week overwhelmed the electrical grid and left millions shivering in the cold. But the crisis was far from over, with many people still in need of safe drinking water.

Fewer than a half-million homes remained without electricity, although utility officials said limited rolling blackouts could still occur.

The storms also left more than 320,000 homes and businesses without power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. About 70,000 power outages persisted after an ice storm in eastern Kentucky, while nearly 67,000 were without electricity in West Virginia.

Snow and ice moved into the Appalachians, northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, and later the Northeast. Back-to-back storms left 15 inches of snow in Little Rock, Arkansas, tying a 1918 record, the National Weather Service said.

The extreme weather was blamed for the deaths of over three dozen people, some while trying to keep warm. In the Houston area, one family died from carbon monoxide as their car idled in their garage. A woman and her three grandchildren were killed in a fire authorities said might have been caused by a fireplace they were using.

In Texas on Thursday, just under 500,000 homes and businesses remained without power, down from about 3 million a day earlier. The state's grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said the remaining outages are largely weather-related, rather than forced blackouts beginning Monday to stabilize the power grid.

"We will keep working around the clock until every single customer has their power back on," said ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin.

Woodfin warned that rotating outages could return if electricity demand rises as people get power and heating back, though they would not last as long as outages earlier this week.

Adding to the state's misery, the weather jeopardized drinking water systems. Authorities ordered 7 million people -- a quarter of the population of the nation's second-largest state -- to boil tap water before drinking it, following record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and pipes.

Water pressure has fallen because lines have frozen, and many people left faucets dripping to prevent pipes from icing over, said Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Gov. Greg Abbott urged residents to shut off water to their homes, if possible, to prevent more busted pipes and preserve pressure in municipal systems.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said he expects residents in the nation's fourth-largest city will have to boil tap water before drinking it until Sunday or Monday.

Some Austin hospitals faced a loss in water pressure and heat.

"Because this is a statewide emergency situation that is also impacting other hospitals within the Austin area, no one hospital currently has the capacity to accept transport of a large number of patients," said David Huffstutler, CEO of St. David's South Austin Medical Center.

At Houston Methodist, two of its community hospitals did not have running water but still treated patients, with most non-emergency surgeries and procedures canceled for Thursday and possibly today, said spokeswoman Gale Smith.

Emergency rooms were crowded "due to patients being unable to meet their medical needs at home without electricity," Smith said. She said pipes had burst in Methodist's hospitals but were being repaired as they happened.

Texas Children's Hospital's main campus at the Texas Medical Center and another location had low water pressure, but the system was adequately staffed and patients had enough water and "are safe and comfortable," spokeswoman Jenn Jacome said.

FEMA sent generators to support water treatment plants, hospitals and nursing homes in Texas, along with thousands of blankets and ready-to-eat meals, officials said. The Texas Restaurant Association also said it was coordinating donations of food to hospitals.

Weather-related outages also struck Oregon, where some customers have been without power for almost a week. A Portland supermarket threw its perishable food into dumpsters, leading to a clash between scavengers and police.

The damage to the power system was the worst in 40 years, said Maria Pope, CEO of Portland General Electric. At the peak of the storm, more than 350,000 customers in the Portland area were in the dark. More than 100,000 customers remained without power Thursday in Oregon.

"These are the most dangerous conditions we've ever seen in the history of PGE," said Dale Goodman, director of utility operations, who declined to predict when all customers would have power restored.

Utilities from Minnesota to Texas implemented rolling blackouts to ease the burden on strained power grids. Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states from the Dakotas to the Texas Panhandle, said rolling blackouts were no longer needed, but it asked customers to conserve energy until at least 10 p.m. Saturday.

The weather also disrupted water systems in several Southern cities, including New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana, where fire trucks delivered water to hospitals and bottled water was brought in for patients and staff, Shreveport television station KSLA reported.

Power was cut to a New Orleans facility that pumps drinking water from the Mississippi River. A spokeswoman for the Sewerage and Water Board said on-site generators were used until electricity was restored.

As the storms marched eastward, 12 people had to be rescued Wednesday night from boats after a dock weighed down by snow and ice collapsed on Tennessee's Cumberland River, the Nashville Fire Department said. Elsewhere in the state, a 9-year-old boy was killed when the tube his father was pulling behind an ATV slammed into a mailbox.

A 69-year-old Arkansas man was found dead Wednesday after falling into a frozen pond while trying to rescue a calf from the water in Magazine, about 90 miles northwest of Little Rock, the Logan County Sheriff's Office said.

In Kentucky, a 77-year-old woman was found dead of likely hypothermia Wednesday night after going without power and heat for two days, Boyd County Coroner Mark Hammond said.

A man fell through the ice on the Detroit River on Wednesday night and likely drowned, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said. The man was with others when he walked onto the ice just off Belle Isle, Michigan, about 5 p.m. and began "jumping up and down," Lt. Jeremiah Schiessel said. Crews were unable to reach the spot where the man was last seen because the ice was too thin, Schiessel said.