‘There Was No Plan’: City Scrambles to Shelter Residents Left in the Cold
Members of the Dallas City Council describe navigating a chaotic few days of power outages, burst pipes, and icy roads without clarity from the electricity provider.
By
Peter Simek and Matt Goodman
Published in
FrontBurner
February 17, 2021
5:15 pm
On Tuesday evening, downtown, Uptown, and East Dallas Council member David Blewett became so frustrated with his inability to reach constituents suffering through the prolonged power outages that he did something he has only done a handful of times while in office. He tweeted.
Blewett said in his tweet that he was testing the medium and had “a bet going” about its effectiveness. Without any context, however, the tweet came across as tone deaf, particularly at the end of a day that had seen pipes burst in several Uptown apartment complexes. His followers pounced, some responding with videos of flooded apartments and images of Uptown residents living in the freezing cold for multiple days. Their anger sprang from deepening anxiety as extended power outages pushed the severe winter weather event into a humanitarian crisis.