6 ms·

When a hurricane, flood, tornado, or other earthquake hits - do we 'assign blame' in the same way? Why isn't this whole event just considered a natural disaster

When a hurricane, flood, tornado, or other earthquake hits - do we 'assign blame' in the same way? Why isn't this whole event just considered a natural disaster?

WalterGR 6y ago
Because the lack of winterization of elements of the energy supply chain in Texas was and is a known issue. When the levees failed during hurricane Katrina, we blamed the levees and not the water, because we can plan for and prepare for adverse weather that we know is absolutely going to happen.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  What was the cost benefit analysis of winterizing for a once-in-30 years event? Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    I don’t know. Are you suggesting that we blame neither the weather nor the known lack of winterization but instead a C-B analysis? Definitely the analysis is important but this feels like moving the goalposts to divert blame away from the known lack of winterization. Edit: Getting off-track here, but “Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?” For the record, that 10% also buys you other perks, such as 47 human lives so far. To intentionally tug the heart-strings, check out https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+deaths https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+deaths where you can read about, for example, a little boy freezing to death in his home.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I think this is fundamentally a problem amenable to a cost-benefit tradeoff discussion provided you get the costs and benefits right. If the argument is “this went badly because of a lack of winterization because the costs were improperly considered”, I can follow that logic and agree. If the argument is “this went badly and this is an engineering problem for which cost-benefit analysis has no proper place”, I disagree pretty strongly.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Also, lord knows how much spent in insurance payouts, property damage, and wasted food when the power went out. Plus the economic drag created by infrastructure being wrecked for the next couple of months, diminished tax receipts, etc. Have you seen the videos of hotels flooding after their pipes burst? Fixing that stuff isn’t going to be cheap at all. I would bet that those hotel operators are now going to spend a lot more fixing up their buildings than whatever reliable energy would have costed. Oh, and any damages building won’t be generating any profit until it’s fixed and everyone else is doing well enough to spend on discretionary items, which will take a while since every plumber is probably booked solid for months.
  - matthewmacleod 6y ago
    What was the cost benefit analysis of winterizing for a once-in-30 years event? Isn't this exactly what is missing? Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051? It might well be, yes.
  - toiletfuneral 6y ago
    Great point, looks like 'not at all' I mean we let 450,000k people die to keep vape shops and hunting stores open and who knows how many people have lost their homes because landlords don't want real jobs. So it seems clear the great free market has priced current levels of misery at 'not worth solving lol'
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    considering the billions and billions of dollars that will now be doled out in insurance claims, yes almost certainly even assuming your 10% figure is accurate.
  - curiousllama 6y ago
    Idk the exact #s but generally yes - that's why you don't see regular blackouts in the developed world. Regardless, how about .01% of the cost for an effective contingency plan? They didn't have that either.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    > Is it worth paying 10% extra No, cost-benefit-wise, it isn't: it makes more sense to buy a generator and have it handy. Even if you have to replace it every 10 years, you're still ahead. I'm not being entirely callous here, either: I live in Dallas and just lived through 3 days of intermittent power and heat and it sucked a lot. I'll be investing in a power generator in a few months (when they become available again). If half the homes in Texas had been able to switch to their own generators for a few days, the grid would have been able to sustain the remaining load. The worse problem we have down here is water, and there's not a whole lot an individual can do about that: if we're going to collectivize the winterization of anything, I'd rather it be the pipes.
    - WalterGR 6y ago
      Stores are already out of water. They would quickly run out of gas to power everyone’s generators. Definitely generators would have helped, but only to a point.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        If you want to do it right, you probably have a generator wired in that feeds off a big propane tank. There's also a lot to be said for having an automatic system that works even if you're not home. (That said, this is the perspective of someone in a northern state who normally travels a lot so I come at this from the perspective of not losing power for an extended period during any random winter.)
        chasd00 6y ago
        right, there are setups that would have helped people get through the situation better but actually needing it is so rare as to not be worth the cost. When it's > 100F in Chicago for three weeks in a row things start to fail because that is very very rare. Three weeks > 100F in TX happens every so often and we have plans for it. A state wide winter storm and sub-zero temperatures is pretty unheard of for Texas and so, yeah, things fell apart.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Burst pipes can cause $100,000 worth of damage to a house, although it's usually less. There could have been a million houses affected. And burst pipes won't be the only cost of this event, by far. So the power companies saved a few million dollars and cost Texas a hundred billion. This is a clear example of where an ounce of prevention would have saved a pound of cure.
    - chasd00 6y ago
      i don't want to be over-libertarian here but you need to take care of your property. I, myself, have a burst water pipe in an exterior wall right now (i live in Dallas) i don't blame the power company for that. I blame only running the cold water side of my sink during the coldest nights. It was the hot water side that froze and burst. edit: before anyone replies "but the water service failed!" then you turn off your water at the curb. and before you say "the city has to do that!" no they don't. You should have a key (from any hardware store) and know how to operate the valve.
      - dota_fanatic 6y ago
        For some people, no power for days plus running all lines does not prevent frozen pipes. The problem is in not knowing exactly which conditions will freeze the lines, we dont have temperature sensors on them, so people run them and hope for the best. Few are so prudent as to voluntarily drain their home for days on just the chance lines will freeze.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    I'm not convinced that winterizing for Texas would be a 10% upswing in costs. I assume there's some approach that's not the "enclose the whole plant" approach used in cold weather states.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    1989, 2003, 2011, and now 2021, I don't think I'd call this a once-in-30-years event. When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a report[0] after the Feb 2011 hard freeze, they said "While extreme cold weather events are obviously not as common in the Southwest as elsewhere, they do occur every few years," which seems to have been bang-on. That report, like this article, correctly identifies ERCOT's "energy-only market" as the underlying source of problems, in my opinion. 0. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-re...
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    30 people and counting have died in Texas, with millions in damages likely due to burst pipes and other weather-related catastrophes. But none of those costs will be borne by the power companies, so cost/benefit analyses by those power companies will say, no, it's never worthwhile to incur extra costs, ever.
  - cosmotic 6y ago
    In the past 30 years, this has happened three times, so it's more like a once-in-10 years event. This just so happens to be the worst of the three
    - chasd00 6y ago
      i've lived in Texas for 33 of my 45 years and don't recall anything like this. I could be wrong though because this is just my memory talking. I do remember in 2011, 14" of snow and power being out for about three days for me in Oak Cliff ( just SW of downtown Dallas). I loaded my wife and infant in the car and drove to Plano ( about 45min North of Dallas ) and stayed at my inlaws who had power. I don't recall the power outages being anywhere near as widespread as this event. ..certainly not down South near Austin. I also don't recall water service being an issue at all.
      - WalterGR 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26197161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26197161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196774
  - Arrath 6y ago
    Broad brush: Is it worth hardening our infrastructure to protect against disasters? I would say yes, absolutely. Whether you use a one-in-a-decade, one-in-a-century or some other metric is up to the bean counters and their C-B analysis. I'm currently working on a $200mm project that is reinforcing some infrastructure against a one-in-4000yr event, there are definitely some differing risk tolerances out there. To call it simply 3 extra days of electricity is a bit disingenuous I would think. There are massive downstream costs caused by this disaster, not even including the loss of life. How many apartment buildings will need to be torn down to the studs to remediate the water damage? How many buildings won't receive proper repair and end up with residents suffering from the health problems living in those conditions would entail? How much economic output/activity has been suppressed by a weather event that other parts of the country would have/did shrug off? And to venture down my own political rabbit hole, how much of that hypothetical 10% extra cost of electricity could be absorbed if the utility was public and the share of funds that go to profit instead went to expansion and upgrade of the infrastructure?
tshaddox 6y ago
We certainly assign blame when people or groups whose responsibilities include preparing for and responding to natural disasters fail to do so.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
When a hurricane, flood, tornado, or other earthquake hits - do we 'assign blame' in the same way? Yes, of course. Why isn't this whole event just considered a natural disaster? It is, but unexpected or rare events like "natural disasters" test our systems of emergency response. Disruption is likely in many cases, but if those systems fail it's important to understand why, and how our responses could be improved in the future.
- chasd00 6y ago
  Plus, Texas always has a big target on its back. It's a large, red, opinionated state with a decent economy and growing population. Any time there's an opportunity to knock it down a few pegs everyone on the other team is going to do so.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ashtonkem 6y ago
When infrastructure is built in areas where hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes are expected and said infrastructure fails, we do assign blame. And we should! The attempts to rationalize this as a “once in a century” event are full of it. This nearly happened in 2011, and similar freezes happened in 1989. This is a “once in a decade” event, and those responsible for building critical infrastructure should have a plan for it.
- chasd00 6y ago
  1989 was 30 years ago. I was in Dallas and remember the 2011 event well, it wasn't anywhere near the same. The major problems in 2011 were trees falling on power lines it wasn't core generation facilities failing.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Your summary of 2011 is in complete contradiction of the FERC report on the incident. And frankly, I trust them more than I trust you. The report in particular said that 67% of the lost capacity was directly attributable to cold weather, specifically frozen sensing lines, frozen water pipes, windmill blade icing, etc. A remaining 12% of the shortfall was secondarily caused by the weather, specifically plants running low on fuel. This leaves a remaining 21% for “other”, which presumably includes downed lines. I wouldn’t call that the “major” problem, not compared to the 67% caused by the plants freezing. https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the-southwest-could-have-been-avoided/ https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the... As far as 1989 being 30 years ago: it’s still within living memory. It’s not like we’re talking about the 1899 freeze or whatever, lots of people in Texas remember it! So far Texas has had power issues due to the cold in 1989, 2011, and 2021. I think by the point you’re having this every 10-20 years, it’s time to start planning for it, no?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - chasd00 6y ago
      Not really, from your link "A total of 210 individual generating units within the footprint of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which covers most of Texas, experienced either an outage, a derate, or a failure to start. The loss of generation was severe enough on Feb. 2 to trigger a controlled load shed of 4 GW. Spot prices in ERCOT hit the $3,000 per MWh cap on Feb. 2, the worst day of the event. The following day, local transmission constraints coupled with the loss of local generation triggered load shedding for another 180,000 customers in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas." that is not close to the severity of what happened over the course of this week. "According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages 75% of the state's deregulated electricity market, the single-day record for demand, set in 2018, was smashed on Valentine's Day. And as the weather has gotten worse, the capacity to generate electricity has diminished: By Tuesday, per ERCOT's CEO, 45,000 megawatts of generating capacity was offline — up from 34,000 megawatts offline the day before, representing more than half of what the state typically uses in a day. https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-pow...
cafard 6y ago
When the earthquake hit in Armenia, what, 20 years ago?, and the Soviet-built apartments pancaked, people were quite willing to assign blame.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

When a hurricane, flood, tornado, or other earthquake hits - do we 'assign blame' in the same way? Why isn't this whole event just considered a natural disaster?

WalterGR 6y ago

Because the lack of winterization of elements of the energy supply chain in Texas was and is a known issue. When the levees failed during hurricane Katrina, we blamed the levees and not the water, because we can plan for and prepare for adverse weather that we know is absolutely going to happen.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago
What was the cost benefit analysis of winterizing for a once-in-30 years event? Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?
- WalterGR 6y ago
  I don’t know. Are you suggesting that we blame neither the weather nor the known lack of winterization but instead a C-B analysis? Definitely the analysis is important but this feels like moving the goalposts to divert blame away from the known lack of winterization. Edit: Getting off-track here, but “Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051?” For the record, that 10% also buys you other perks, such as 47 human lives so far. To intentionally tug the heart-strings, check out https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+deaths https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+deaths where you can read about, for example, a little boy freezing to death in his home.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I think this is fundamentally a problem amenable to a cost-benefit tradeoff discussion provided you get the costs and benefits right. If the argument is “this went badly because of a lack of winterization because the costs were improperly considered”, I can follow that logic and agree. If the argument is “this went badly and this is an engineering problem for which cost-benefit analysis has no proper place”, I disagree pretty strongly.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Also, lord knows how much spent in insurance payouts, property damage, and wasted food when the power went out. Plus the economic drag created by infrastructure being wrecked for the next couple of months, diminished tax receipts, etc. Have you seen the videos of hotels flooding after their pipes burst? Fixing that stuff isn’t going to be cheap at all. I would bet that those hotel operators are now going to spend a lot more fixing up their buildings than whatever reliable energy would have costed. Oh, and any damages building won’t be generating any profit until it’s fixed and everyone else is doing well enough to spend on discretionary items, which will take a while since every plumber is probably booked solid for months.
- matthewmacleod 6y ago
  What was the cost benefit analysis of winterizing for a once-in-30 years event? Isn't this exactly what is missing? Is it worth paying 10% extra (for example) for electricity forever, in return for having 3 extra days of electricity for a few days in 2021 and 2051? It might well be, yes.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  Great point, looks like 'not at all' I mean we let 450,000k people die to keep vape shops and hunting stores open and who knows how many people have lost their homes because landlords don't want real jobs. So it seems clear the great free market has priced current levels of misery at 'not worth solving lol'
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  considering the billions and billions of dollars that will now be doled out in insurance claims, yes almost certainly even assuming your 10% figure is accurate.
- curiousllama 6y ago
  Idk the exact #s but generally yes - that's why you don't see regular blackouts in the developed world. Regardless, how about .01% of the cost for an effective contingency plan? They didn't have that either.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > Is it worth paying 10% extra No, cost-benefit-wise, it isn't: it makes more sense to buy a generator and have it handy. Even if you have to replace it every 10 years, you're still ahead. I'm not being entirely callous here, either: I live in Dallas and just lived through 3 days of intermittent power and heat and it sucked a lot. I'll be investing in a power generator in a few months (when they become available again). If half the homes in Texas had been able to switch to their own generators for a few days, the grid would have been able to sustain the remaining load. The worse problem we have down here is water, and there's not a whole lot an individual can do about that: if we're going to collectivize the winterization of anything, I'd rather it be the pipes.
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    Stores are already out of water. They would quickly run out of gas to power everyone’s generators. Definitely generators would have helped, but only to a point.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      If you want to do it right, you probably have a generator wired in that feeds off a big propane tank. There's also a lot to be said for having an automatic system that works even if you're not home. (That said, this is the perspective of someone in a northern state who normally travels a lot so I come at this from the perspective of not losing power for an extended period during any random winter.)
      - chasd00 6y ago
        right, there are setups that would have helped people get through the situation better but actually needing it is so rare as to not be worth the cost. When it's > 100F in Chicago for three weeks in a row things start to fail because that is very very rare. Three weeks > 100F in TX happens every so often and we have plans for it. A state wide winter storm and sub-zero temperatures is pretty unheard of for Texas and so, yeah, things fell apart.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Burst pipes can cause $100,000 worth of damage to a house, although it's usually less. There could have been a million houses affected. And burst pipes won't be the only cost of this event, by far. So the power companies saved a few million dollars and cost Texas a hundred billion. This is a clear example of where an ounce of prevention would have saved a pound of cure.
  - chasd00 6y ago
    i don't want to be over-libertarian here but you need to take care of your property. I, myself, have a burst water pipe in an exterior wall right now (i live in Dallas) i don't blame the power company for that. I blame only running the cold water side of my sink during the coldest nights. It was the hot water side that froze and burst. edit: before anyone replies "but the water service failed!" then you turn off your water at the curb. and before you say "the city has to do that!" no they don't. You should have a key (from any hardware store) and know how to operate the valve.
    - dota_fanatic 6y ago
      For some people, no power for days plus running all lines does not prevent frozen pipes. The problem is in not knowing exactly which conditions will freeze the lines, we dont have temperature sensors on them, so people run them and hope for the best. Few are so prudent as to voluntarily drain their home for days on just the chance lines will freeze.
- tyingq 6y ago
  I'm not convinced that winterizing for Texas would be a 10% upswing in costs. I assume there's some approach that's not the "enclose the whole plant" approach used in cold weather states.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  1989, 2003, 2011, and now 2021, I don't think I'd call this a once-in-30-years event. When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released a report[0] after the Feb 2011 hard freeze, they said "While extreme cold weather events are obviously not as common in the Southwest as elsewhere, they do occur every few years," which seems to have been bang-on. That report, like this article, correctly identifies ERCOT's "energy-only market" as the underlying source of problems, in my opinion. 0. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-report.pdf https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/08-16-11-re...
- pwinnski 6y ago
  30 people and counting have died in Texas, with millions in damages likely due to burst pipes and other weather-related catastrophes. But none of those costs will be borne by the power companies, so cost/benefit analyses by those power companies will say, no, it's never worthwhile to incur extra costs, ever.
- cosmotic 6y ago
  In the past 30 years, this has happened three times, so it's more like a once-in-10 years event. This just so happens to be the worst of the three
  - chasd00 6y ago
    i've lived in Texas for 33 of my 45 years and don't recall anything like this. I could be wrong though because this is just my memory talking. I do remember in 2011, 14" of snow and power being out for about three days for me in Oak Cliff ( just SW of downtown Dallas). I loaded my wife and infant in the car and drove to Plano ( about 45min North of Dallas ) and stayed at my inlaws who had power. I don't recall the power outages being anywhere near as widespread as this event. ..certainly not down South near Austin. I also don't recall water service being an issue at all.
    - WalterGR 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26197161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26197161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26196774
- Arrath 6y ago
  Broad brush: Is it worth hardening our infrastructure to protect against disasters? I would say yes, absolutely. Whether you use a one-in-a-decade, one-in-a-century or some other metric is up to the bean counters and their C-B analysis. I'm currently working on a $200mm project that is reinforcing some infrastructure against a one-in-4000yr event, there are definitely some differing risk tolerances out there. To call it simply 3 extra days of electricity is a bit disingenuous I would think. There are massive downstream costs caused by this disaster, not even including the loss of life. How many apartment buildings will need to be torn down to the studs to remediate the water damage? How many buildings won't receive proper repair and end up with residents suffering from the health problems living in those conditions would entail? How much economic output/activity has been suppressed by a weather event that other parts of the country would have/did shrug off? And to venture down my own political rabbit hole, how much of that hypothetical 10% extra cost of electricity could be absorbed if the utility was public and the share of funds that go to profit instead went to expansion and upgrade of the infrastructure?

tshaddox 6y ago

We certainly assign blame when people or groups whose responsibilities include preparing for and responding to natural disasters fail to do so.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

When a hurricane, flood, tornado, or other earthquake hits - do we 'assign blame' in the same way? Yes, of course. Why isn't this whole event just considered a natural disaster? It is, but unexpected or rare events like "natural disasters" test our systems of emergency response. Disruption is likely in many cases, but if those systems fail it's important to understand why, and how our responses could be improved in the future.

chasd00 6y ago
Plus, Texas always has a big target on its back. It's a large, red, opinionated state with a decent economy and growing population. Any time there's an opportunity to knock it down a few pegs everyone on the other team is going to do so.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ashtonkem 6y ago

When infrastructure is built in areas where hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes are expected and said infrastructure fails, we do assign blame. And we should! The attempts to rationalize this as a “once in a century” event are full of it. This nearly happened in 2011, and similar freezes happened in 1989. This is a “once in a decade” event, and those responsible for building critical infrastructure should have a plan for it.

chasd00 6y ago
1989 was 30 years ago. I was in Dallas and remember the 2011 event well, it wasn't anywhere near the same. The major problems in 2011 were trees falling on power lines it wasn't core generation facilities failing.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Your summary of 2011 is in complete contradiction of the FERC report on the incident. And frankly, I trust them more than I trust you. The report in particular said that 67% of the lost capacity was directly attributable to cold weather, specifically frozen sensing lines, frozen water pipes, windmill blade icing, etc. A remaining 12% of the shortfall was secondarily caused by the weather, specifically plants running low on fuel. This leaves a remaining 21% for “other”, which presumably includes downed lines. I wouldn’t call that the “major” problem, not compared to the 67% caused by the plants freezing. https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the-southwest-could-have-been-avoided/ https://www.powermag.com/ferc-nerc-february-blackouts-in-the... As far as 1989 being 30 years ago: it’s still within living memory. It’s not like we’re talking about the 1899 freeze or whatever, lots of people in Texas remember it! So far Texas has had power issues due to the cold in 1989, 2011, and 2021. I think by the point you’re having this every 10-20 years, it’s time to start planning for it, no?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chasd00 6y ago
    Not really, from your link "A total of 210 individual generating units within the footprint of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which covers most of Texas, experienced either an outage, a derate, or a failure to start. The loss of generation was severe enough on Feb. 2 to trigger a controlled load shed of 4 GW. Spot prices in ERCOT hit the $3,000 per MWh cap on Feb. 2, the worst day of the event. The following day, local transmission constraints coupled with the loss of local generation triggered load shedding for another 180,000 customers in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas." that is not close to the severity of what happened over the course of this week. "According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages 75% of the state's deregulated electricity market, the single-day record for demand, set in 2018, was smashed on Valentine's Day. And as the weather has gotten worse, the capacity to generate electricity has diminished: By Tuesday, per ERCOT's CEO, 45,000 megawatts of generating capacity was offline — up from 34,000 megawatts offline the day before, representing more than half of what the state typically uses in a day. https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-pow...

cafard 6y ago

When the earthquake hit in Armenia, what, 20 years ago?, and the Soviet-built apartments pancaked, people were quite willing to assign blame.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]