Tens Of People Killed, Tens Of Millions More Are Threatened By Cold Temperature And Water Contamination In Texas

Photo illustration (Jonny Mcnee/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Extreme winter hit the United States (US). 60 people died, among them from carbon monoxide poisoning when they ran cars or started generators indoors to keep temperatures warm. The clean water crisis also makes the situation even more deadly.

Texas is one of the states worst affected. Until this news was written, Sunday, February 21, 24 people had been recorded dead. Local officials estimate this number is likely to increase,

A winter storm has the potential to hit Texas, where 13 million people or nearly half of the State's population are threatened with a shortage of clean water supplies. The authorities had given instructions for residents to boil the remaining water supply before consuming it.

Access to clean water has been drastically reduced due to a broken water distillation system amidst this historic cold weather. Apart from Texas, this week, clean water services in several states on the southern side of the US that were hit by snow and ice storms were also stopped.

There are Indonesian citizens

It has been confirmed that Indonesian citizens (WNI) are among the millions of people affected by the extreme winter in Texas. Even though the electricity was on, before that they had to live in darkness by setting candles.

As reported by the BBC, Sunday, February 21, extreme winter also cut off the flow of water in the City of Jackson, Mississippi. The city is inhabited by about 150 thousand people. The same thing happened in Tennessee, a region with a population of 651 thousand inhabitants.

Residents in the southern part of the United States, where clean water pipes are frozen, are now forced to boil snow to find water suitable for consumption. The southern region of the US is rarely hit by extreme cold.

What's going on in Texas?

The energy grid in Texas is overwhelmed by soaring heating needs. The temperature in Texas had dropped to -18 degrees Celsius earlier this week.

That figure is the lowest temperature in Texas in 30 years. As of Friday, February 19, 180,000 homes and shops in Texas had not yet had electricity.

Earlier, 3.3 million people in Texas faced blackouts. Nearly half of the population or around 13 million people face the disruption of clean water services.

This week hundreds of water systems have been damaged by freezing. Austin, the capital of Texas, lost 325 million gallons or 1.2 billion liters of clean water when water pipes burst.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued instructions for residents to boil all water before consumption. This needs to be done to avoid the consumption of contaminated water.

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