1st at 5 San Antonians.
Well remember this day last year when
the brutal winter storm rolled through,
impacting the power grid and
leaving many of us in the cold and
dark for days we saw snowfall on
Valentine's Day and hours later,
Irkut issued a declaration of emergency.
Not only was the power knocked out,
but 10s of thousands of Texans
also lost access to water,
Kens 5 consumer reporter Nicole Conn.
Has covered the fallout from
the storm for the past year.
Today she takes a look back Nicole,
Deborah the weather.
It's remarkably different.
One year later,
it was beautiful out today,
but let's break down what
the numbers tell us about the
2021 February winter storm.
See what changes the power
grid saw in the last 365 days.
Plus find out if Texas is still
vulnerable to a repeat of the
lights and heat going out again.
The February Winter Storm in
San Antonio by the numbers
701 vehicle accidents,
40,000 emergency 911 calls,
734 officers manning highway closures,
34 structure fires,
111 carbon monoxide incidents.
4,000,000 damage to city buildings, 346,000.
People without power in San Antonio.
I knew something was going wrong.
4 minutes, 37 seconds. How close Texas was
to a total power grid collapse,
418,000,000 so far.
What CPS energy paid in fuel costs?
We are going to be paying this
off for for decades, and it's
not something that is uncommon.
378 with the average CPS energy
customer will pay for fuel charges
spread out over 25 years. I've would
have hoped we had learned
that lesson in 2011.
It doesn't appear that we did learn that.
Lesson in 2011 after we had a
similar event, although it wasn't
as bad or didn't last as long
16 deaths in Bear County one year later,
the power grid saw some improvements
99% powerplant statewide, that passed
new winterization standards, at least.
Initially. It looks like maybe the
winterization rule they put in place and
the inspections are working pretty well,
but energy experts warn the power grid is
not completely fixed.
The problems that we experienced a year ago.
Most of them are still there.
Some of them have been addressed
in in significant ways and others
have just not been addressed at all.
One major concern is a natural gas supply
chain has not been winterized enough.
Most Texas power plants use natural gas
for fuel. We don't fix the fuel side,
then we just end up with a bunch of
power plants that can't get fueled
and we're in a similar situation.
It's kind of like having a
bunch of cars in your driveway
that are totally operational.
But no gas in the tank.
You're not going
anywhere. The natural gas
industry is regulated by the
Texas Railroad Commission,
and it could be another year
before it requires changes.
Technically, the Railroad
Commission could wait until
spring of next year to finalize
a weatherization rule. Texans
still need to be ready
should the power go out in
the cold again.
There have absolutely been material
and significant changes that have
been made to the power plants and
to the infrastructure to reduce.
The possibility of us having
that happen again in the future,
is it a? Is it a guarantee?
Is it a perfect solution? No,
because there's no way to know how long
it will be before the next extreme
winter weather storm comes to Texas.
A recent study from Rice University
showed that while many people
viewed the February winter storm
as an extreme weather scenario,
it wasn't actually all that extreme.
Historically, Nicole Con
Kens 5 Eyewitness News.