Higher temperatures spread across the southern US on Saturday, bringing relief to a winter-weary region that faces a challenging cleanup and expensive repairs from days of extreme cold and widespread power outages.
In hard-hit Texas, where millions were warned to boil tap water before drinking it, the warm-up was expected to last for several days. The thaw produced burst pipes throughout the region, adding to the list of woes from severe conditions that were blamed for more than 70 deaths.
By Saturday afternoon, the sun had come out in Dallas and temperatures were nearing 10°C. People emerged to walk and jog in residential neighborhoods after days indoors. Many roads had dried out, and patches of snow were melting. Snowmen slumped.
Photo: Bloomberg
Linda Nguyen woke up in a Dallas hotel room on Saturday morning with an assurance she had not had in nearly a week: She and her cat had somewhere to sleep with power and water.
Electricity had been restored to her apartment on Wednesday, but when Nguyen arrived home from work the next evening, she found a soaked carpet. A pipe had burst in her bedroom.
“It’s essentially unlivable,” said Nguyen, 27, who works in real estate. “Everything is completely ruined.”
Deaths attributed to the weather include a man at an Abilene healthcare facility where the lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible.
Officials also reported deaths from hypothermia, including homeless people and those inside buildings with no power or heat. Others died in vehicle accidents on icy roads or from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.
Roughly half the deaths reported so far occurred in Texas, with multiple fatalities also in Tennessee, Kentucky, Oregon and a few other Southern and Midwestern states.
A Tennessee farmer died trying to save two calves from a frozen pond.
US President Joe Biden’s office on Saturday said he had declared a major disaster in Texas, directing federal agencies to help in the recovery.
US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter that she had helped raise more than US$3 million for relief.
She was soliciting help for a Houston food bank, one of 12 Texas organizations that she said would benefit from the donations.
The storms left more than 300,000 still without power across the country on Saturday, many of them in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
IT’S A DEAL? Including the phrase ‘overlapping claims’ in a Chinese-Indonesian joint statement over the weekend puts Jakarta’s national interests at risk, critics say Indonesia yesterday said it does not recognize China’s claims over the South China Sea, despite signing a maritime development deal with Beijing, as some analysts warned the pact risked compromising its sovereign rights. Beijing has long clashed with Southeast Asian neighbors over the South China Sea, which it claims almost in its entirety, based on a “nine-dash line” on its maps that cuts into the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of several countries. Joint agreements with China in the strategic waterway have been sensitive for years, with some nations wary of deals they fear could be interpreted as legitimizing Beijing’s vast claims. In 2016,
RSS