Thread by @NBCNews

The power was out, the temperature was in the low 20s and the roads bordered on impassable when Vince Gordon lost water at his south Jackson home in mid-February. nbcnews.to/2On9LM9

(1/10) #NBCNewsThreads

His family hunkered down with a generator, and the reserve of water they’d bought in preparation for the winter storm. By the end of the week, the ice had thawed. But when they checked the faucet, nothing came out. (2/10)

For much of the city, it stayed that way for 3 weeks. At the height of the crisis, at least 40,000 residents in Jackson and neighboring Byram were estimated to have lost water service. (3/10)

Jackson officials said Friday that most of the city’s water service was restored, but the crisis isn’t over.

While residents are no longer melting snow or collecting rainwater in buckets, officials haven't been able to prove that most of the city’s water is safe to drink. (4/10)

Jackson is a city with an estimated $2B infrastructure problem — the cost of overdue water and sewer overhauls — and a $300M annual budget. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/m… (5/10)

25% of residents live below the poverty line. The city’s median income is just below $39,000. Although it’s Mississippi’s largest city, Jackson, where 82% of residents are Black, has struggled. Decades of white flight have whittled down the city’s economic footing. (6/10)

“All of this happened to individuals at no fault of their own and yet they have to suffer,” said Danyelle Holmes, a field director with the Poor People’s Campaign and a Jackson resident. (7/10)

For many residents, frequenting water giveaways has become a part of their daily routine.

Life these days is about “just getting water and trying to make it work,” said Alonzo Mabry, who has been scouring the city for free bottled water for his 94-year-old mother. (8/10)

Officials hope to begin lifting the boil-water notice by next week, but absent an overhaul of what Jackson Mayor Lumumba has called “peanut brittle”-like infrastructure, and the hundreds of millions of dollars to make it happen, the threat of the next outage looms. (9/10)

“We can never say, ‘we won’t see this day again,’” Holmes said. “We know the next time we experience this, it will be worse.” nbcnews.com/news/us-news/m… (10/10)