During power outages in the wake of the 2021 winter storms — known in Texas as Winter Storm Uri — Rita, an Indigenous woman with severe mental illness and congestive heart failure, and her then-partner tried to stay warm in brutal conditions in a tent on the streets of Austin with camp stoves and a propane heater. They survived, but at least six people were homeless He didn’t do that.
In her new book Power offUniversity of Texas at El Paso’s Angela Frederick details the challenges people with disabilities faced when parts of the state’s power grid went down in February 2021. Frederick’s book summarizes the unique challenges people with disabilities and chronic illnesses face when they lose power, including a lack of resources among local governments to help them during climate disasters.
“Their worlds were contracted in disability-specific ways, and they often negotiated disability-related constraints as they strategically positioned themselves for survival,” Frederick writes.
I spoke to Frederick about how political decisions led to horrors during Winter Storm Uri, what it means to be an energy-dependent individual, and how there needs to be better planning to help people with disabilities survive climate disasters.
S. Texas, she wrote, “is known for its exaggerated ideology of rugged individualism and its sensitivity to federal interference.” How did this lead to political decisions that contributed to the failure of parts of the power grid during Owerri’s term?
I started this project thinking I would tell a uniquely Texas story. After all, we are the only state in the country that has its own insulated power grid. However, by the end of this project, I had come to see Texas as a canary in a coal mine. You can practically draw a line from the period in the 1990s and early 2000s when the state liberalized the grid to the tragedy that occurred during Winter Storm Uri in 2021. This was a project led by the now-defunct Enron. Enron executives wanted to make money selling and trading electricity. Electricity has come to be seen as a commodity much more than a public good. This, I realize, is not at all a unique story to Texas.
Q: Who are the individuals who depend on energy? How are they more vulnerable during climate disasters?
Most people with disabilities and chronic health conditions can be classified as powerless. These groups can experience severe pain, illness, or limited mobility during long-term blackouts due to spoilage of medications or loss of assistive technology. But there is another group in the disability community that we call “strength dependent.” These members of society need strength for their survival. These community members rely on durable, electrically powered medical equipment. The lives of these individuals are in immediate danger when the electricity goes out.
S. What surprised me was that some of the people I spoke to had signed up with utility companies, explaining that they needed power to survive, but they were not being helped. Do you think this points to the fact that potential solutions are still possible Did we fail?
I think this certainly points to the limitations of the individual preparedness model for disaster resilience. There is a lot of focus on this long list of things we need to do to prepare for emergencies. These are really important things to think about.
Some interviewees ignored winter weather warnings and would have fared better if they had been more prepared with food and supplies. But also some of the people I interviewed did everything imaginable to prepare for prolonged power outages, and still found themselves in life-threatening conditions. They were told to be prepared for emergencies, register as an energy customer and register with STEAR, the Texas State Emergency Assistance Registry. They dutifully registered, obtained a doctor’s certificate, and re-enrolled every year. It turns out that registering as an energy-reliant customer doesn’t keep the lights and heat on in the event of a power outage. There is no individual key [for] Every family. As it turns out, enrolling in STEAR did not provide any additional layers of security for people.
People really felt betrayed by this. They were asked to sign up for these things, but it meant nothing in their time of greatest need. Ultimately, preparedness at the individual level is good and important, but the most important thing we can do to keep people out of danger is to strengthen public policies so that we do not find ourselves suffering from preventable infrastructure failures.
S. Can you talk about what care networks are, and how they can save the lives of people with disabilities when infrastructure fails?
Leah Lakshmi Pipzna-Samarasinha defines care networks as informal networks of people with disabilities and people without disabilities who provide care for each other. In contrast to charitable models, which are characterized by power imbalances, care networks involve reciprocal relationships in which interdependence is highly valued. Many people with disabilities already communicate with each other through formal organizations, informal community networks, and on social media. What I found in my research is that people in these networks became spontaneous care networks for communities during Winter Storm Uri. For example, the deaf community was very organized in checking on each other and even distributing water immediately after the crisis. Blind people also showed up for each other in really wonderful ways.
S. Weather events will continue to worsen and recur, and it appears that it may only be a matter of time before history repeats itself with another Ori. What are some changes that you think could reasonably mitigate damage during another energy crisis?
Well, of course, I believe it is our collective responsibility to prevent these failures of critical infrastructure. We must view infrastructure like energy and water as a public good that must be strongly protected. This is a win-win for everyone, including people with disabilities.
Additionally, my book is actually a call to put people with disabilities at the center of the response to climate change and disasters. In almost every disaster, we can find stories of people with disabilities who died or were harmed because emergency response systems were designed based on the assumption that everyone in society is able to see, hear, stand in long lines, drive, etc. People are ultimately excluded from societal response systems when we leave disability as an afterthought.
Approaching this from a different angle, I believe there is great power for entire communities when we put disability at the center of resilience planning. By centering the perspectives of people with disabilities, we can more easily spot weaknesses in our planning. When we correct these weaknesses, more people will benefit.