Winter ice storm ravages Texas businesses, homes

to businesses.

Chris Reynolds is a management analyst at The Texas General Land Office. This agency’s primary purpose is to facilitate federal funding for presidentially declared disasters in Texas. Reynolds is the manager for the Economic Revitalization program, and works closely with businesses negatively affected by natural disasters. He’s actively documenting and witnessing the far reaching effects of the winter storm.

split in half due to the weight of ice on the tree branches, and when it fell it covered the entire road.”

From late Jan. to early Feb., Texans endured a brutal winter storm that had a devastating impact. Trees were falling due to heavy sleet and freezing rain, and as a result many people’s homes and cars were damaged. The icy roads led to several accidents, and a few resulted in fatalities.

One of the biggest impacts of the storm, and one that sparked plenty of concern, were the power outages across the state. In Feb, PowerOutage. us reported that over 300,000 residents were without power, the majority of those people living in Travis County. The outages also meant that many people didn’t have an adequate amount of heat in their homes amidst the freezing temperatures outside. These outages affected everyone, from homes

“The most negative impact of the recent ice storm was the loss of power to residential customers caused by tree branches, weighted down by ice, that broke the power lines,” Reynolds said. “Travis County, which encompasses much of the Austin Metropolitan area, was among the areas most affected by the outages, with more than 146,000 customers without power.”

Schools statewide were affected by the sudden winter storm, and schools in many different districts were closed for the majority of the week. Schools closing for several days can dramatically impact lesson scheduling, and disrupt the length and timeframe of the school year.

“Schools in the Austin Independent School District were closed for four days due to the danger of driving on icy roads, the lack of power to many schools, and the pile of tree debris that made it impossible to get to school,” Reynolds said. “My neighbor’s tree

This ice storm, although sudden, wasn’t entirely unexpected, as this is the third winter storm Texas has had since 2021. These severe and devastating ice storms, which were once uncommon for Texas, are now occurring like clockwork every yearand it’s made some Texans wonder why Texas seems so unprepared each time. The damage done by these storms is significant, and many people are calling for Texas to strengthen preparation for these storms. However, Texas has improved in some areas from last year’s winter storm. The previous year, Texas officials were criticized for the power grid failing during the winter storm. But this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott stated that Texas maintained ample supply in the power grids, and the power outages were mostly caused by trees falling onto power lines.

“The Texas Governor’s Office ensured that our power grid was able to handle an increase in power usage,” Reynolds said. “The power grid was not negatively affected, but the power lines were.”

However, there are genuine criticisms to be made of how Texas, particularly Austin, weren’t the best at communicating crucial information to the public during these storms. During the 2023 storm, residents all over Texas complained about waiting over a day to get a response from local officials about the state of the ongoing storm, and some officials failed to communicate basic information in a timely manner. This is a glaring problem in all of the storms, and a matter that doesn’t appear to be resolved. In the future, residents hope Texas can become fully prepared and equipped for fierce winter storms, and discover solutions to trees falling on power lines.

“One solution would be to trim trees that are close to any power line,” Reynolds said. “I believe that enough attention has been focused on improving our power grid since our last ice storm that knocked power out to so many people.”

Taylor Korte | Photographer