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18 Feb, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"I've received word that South Austin Hospital has no water and is not accepting any new patients in their ED."

Sobering Facebook post from Dr. Chris Ziebell, emergency medicine chief at Dell Medical School. Image
Sent by @Jamesmarroquin: St. David's South Austin is transferring patients out due to lack of water. Brodie location is flooded. Image
Bump on this for the people asking me earlier why it's a such a BFD when roads are impassable during a meltdown of all other infrastructure.
What's happening in Texas is starting to remind me of the first few days of Katrina: a slow-rolling disaster that initially seems like it doesn't have huge immediate human cost, takes days to compound and unfold in its fullness and is wait-and-see'd by authorities until too late.

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More from @AriSchulman

Ari Schulman Profile picture
19 Feb
Much of the public health community now sees its purpose as achieving a capacious, daily-shifting definition of justice more than as healing medical illness. It either refuses to see that one can conflict with the other, or does but considers this a sign of devotion to the cause.
"We made a world-historic breakthrough silver-bullet vaccine? Say, this seems like a good opportunity to settle some scores."
"Gosh, why don't people trust us anymore"
Read 5 tweets
Ari Schulman Profile picture
17 Feb
Purely my gut sense, but I think most people are floored by the collapse of government's ability to handle the most basic collective-action functions and will support whoever can plausibly claim to get the trains running on time, whatever ideological banner they're flying.
Although I'm not hearing that message from Dems, somehow I suspect that the "this is all AOC's fault" message isn't going to do the trick either.
The Texas GOP is doing everything it can to set up this fight on terms they will lose.
houstonchronicle.com/business/energ…
Read 8 tweets
Ari Schulman Profile picture
16 Feb
Reading between the lines of the very limited info coming out of @ERCOT_ISO, it sounds like they may well expect substantial capacity restoration not to come until generating stations see full thaw from the weather, which could be Friday or Saturday.
I say this because most info about the outage focuses on generators knocked offline by weather. Not clear whether that's just freezing temps or ice and snow. But there's no discussion of how generators will come back during freeze, and lots of warning about further cold weather.
So ... it sure sounds like the @ERCOT_ISO is saying its hands are largely tied until weather improves, which I imagine means gets and stays substantially enough above freezing for equipment to unfreeze and perhaps be repaired. And here's the forecast.
Read 5 tweets
Ari Schulman Profile picture
16 Feb
Totally unsurprising that they're extending the predicted outage. The info provided has offered little reason to support the prediction that power would come back on this afternoon — and not much reason to be confident it'll be back tomorrow either.
Most of the communications coming out of @austinenergy and @ERCOT_ISO are simple expectations-management, buck-passing, and obfuscation. No meaningful info on when residents might have power again.
It's almost inevitable now that some of the millions of Texans without heat will die in their homes. @ERCOT_ISO and local utilities offered no warning this might happen and continue to play a "could be back on soon, maybe" game instead of leveling about how bad it may yet get.
Read 7 tweets
Ari Schulman Profile picture
16 Feb
As hundreds of thousands of Austin residents are going on their 30th hour without power during the second or third coldest stretch of weather in recorded history, some questions for @austinenergy and @ERCOT_ISO.
Outages were originally said to be rolling, from 10-40 minutes. Many are on day 2. The last estimate, from yesterday, vaguely says outages "may last" through Tue afternoon.

What is this based on and why should residents have more confidence in it than the last estimate?
Specifically: The reason stated for the outages is record demand (seemingly from people heating their homes) coupled with cold weather taking generation sites offline. One or both of those things has to change for power to come back this afternoon. Which do you expect it to be?
Read 12 tweets
Ari Schulman Profile picture
20 Nov 20
I'll get as close to this as I can, but anyway, here's a useful example of how to drive underground the risk-taking behavior most everyone is doing and get them to not even bother anymore with managing it.
There's a way to talk about pandemic behavior as a referendum on other people's souls, and there's a way talk about it as seeking the good where the perfect is not achievable. A lot of risky pandemic behavior is driven by rebellion against the first, not incidentally.
These things are not unrelated; the pandemic most assuredly is a referendum on our souls. But the aim of public health messaging must be establishing the trust necessary to achieve pragmatic goals. Salvation is below their pay grade.
Read 4 tweets

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