(Reuters) – Texas doctor Natasha Kathuria has practiced medicine in 11 countries, worked through the 2014 “Snowmageddon” storm that ground Atlanta to a halt, and survived the past year’s COVID-19 pandemic crush. But Kathuria and some other doctors in Texas are saying they have never seen a more harrowing week than this one. Record-setting cold weather has cut water and grid energy supplies to hospitals across a wide swath of Texas. Electricity and water services were resuming, but many homes and some hospitals still did not have either on Friday. Half the state’s population was under a “must-boil” order to ensure water is safe. “We’re overwhelmed, way more than we’ve been with COVID,” said Kathuria, who works in several Austin-area emergency rooms. “This system failure has completely rocked us in our ERs – and in our own homes.” Many hospital staffers have stayed in the medical facilities all week – knowing there was no heat or water at home. At least hospitals have generators for basic electricity. Some had water hauled in to fill tanks or hired water tankers. Others had running but not potable water. Doctors in Austin, Houston and the Dallas area called the lack of water their biggest problem. Dialysis machines do not work without water, surgery equipment cannot be sterilized, and hands cannot be washed. Dr. Neil Gandhi, an emergency room physician and the regional medical director for the ER departments at Houston Methodist’s seven hospitals in the area, said those facilities were at 90% operating capacity by Friday afternoon. Earlier in the week, two were able to take only emergency patients, Gandhi added. “On top of the COVID pandemic, this has been a dual trauma event for both our patients and our providers,” Gandhi said. Ambulances struggled to reach people on roads that were not cleared because Texas cities have few snow plows and not nearly enough salt on hand. Doctors in stand-alone emergency care locations who routinely call the 911 emergency number for ambulances to transfer patients to hospitals had to wait more than nine hours for any to arrive – if they were available at all. Gandhi said that in Houston this week there were times when entire neighborhoods simply did not have any emergency medical services. Hospitals set up portable toilets. Inside, patient’s toilets were flushed by tossing in a bucket of water. Less critical dialysis patients delayed treatment, while others limited their time on machines. Rural hospitals across Texas were not only trying to treat patients under tough conditions, but also serving as de facto “warming centers” for the healthy, said John Henderson, president of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. Even with warmer weather forecast for next week there could still be a sea of broken water pipes and other damage. “We worried that when the sun comes out and the temperature goes up,” Kathuria said, “that it’s not necessarily the end in sight.” Nick Note: Arctic winter in the middle of a global warming crises in the south. That was not suppose to happen. Sounds like they need to pump out a lot more green house gases in Texas. Having lived off the grind for the most part since 1985 i think i could be considered a “knowledgeable” user. Especially since i designed and built my systems. I generate on average 100KW of power a day by solar. And i can tell you despite the fact i have massive battery banks that can run the place on full power mode for 3 days. i still need fossil fuel (LPG and Diesel) generator back up. And if we see clouds coming for a 5 day period we go into conversation mode. Which give me up to a week on batteries using the electric cars. What i am trying to explain is during winter bad weather i have to run generators because the solar panels and what is by solar standards massive battery reserves…. its still not enough. The grennie winnie battery back up for the gird just adds another unworkable solution to a unworkable solution to abandoning fossil fuel generation. Its insanity America has some of the biggest cleaning burning natural gas reserves in the world. The infrastructure is in. Go to natural gas as a electric generation and transportation fuel. BOTTOM line the sun does not shine at night and solar does not produce much power through clouds. AND AND AND the wind does not blow all the time and wind generators are a maintenance night mare. I abandoned wind generation years ago. After i did intensive on sight studies of a 7 wind mill farm in Holland that were state of art GE wind turbines…… They could not generate enough power to justify their expense and they constantely broke. Maintenance costs were a killer. Even if you amortized the capital investment over 100 years they are collossal money losers. As far as computer battery electric cars they are unworkable on a mass scale. Set aside the many many problems with the batteries. The US can barley keep with existing electric demand as you are seeing. The grid and generation facilities often times can not keep up with winter electric heating demand and summer time aircon usage. To move transportation energy demand from fossil fuels is a grennie winnie wet dream but in reality its not going to happen. Now WAY can the US electrical system gear up to charge a hundred million electric cars. It really stupid says a man who has three electric cars ALL charged by solar. The solution is so simple. Switch the transportation fleet to CNG and LPG. The supplies and infrastructure are already in place. Their are currently world wide
| Natural Gas Vehicles: | 28,540,819 | |
| Natural Gas Fueling Stations: | 33,383 | |
Now lets look at LPG or Autogas: Autogas is the third most popular automotive fuel in the world, with approximately 16 million passenger cars powered using the fuel. Approximately half of all auto gas-fueled passenger vehicles are in the five largest markets (in descending order): Turkey, South Korea, Poland, Italy, and Australia. For a total of a little over 44 million LNG AND CNG cars. Now when you consider the FACT that their are less then 5 million electric cars in use world wide… You can start to understand they are yanking your dick or pinching you titties.
The Grennie winnies have a power base and they are pushing a unworkable electric car solution that will bankrupt most countries and in reality be impossible to implement on a mass scale. Who is going to pay for the infrastructure: the up grade to the grid: the massive increase in generation systems needed? and don’t forget the power hungry charging station that need high amperage connections to the grid.
Conclusion: I have gasoline, LPG gas, Diesel and electric vehicles. And by far the best solution is LPG or CNG. Electric works for short distances and only if you can charge your car from you own solar system. I have driven my LPG (super charged) Hummer and CNG Defender all over England and Europe since 2000 with the Defender (Betsy) And since 2006 the Hummer (Bertha) without incident.As far as the electric SHIT. The main one we drive is (Dawn a grenenie hippie name) And she is as useless as a stoned all the time on acid dropping peyote button magic mushroom unshaven unbathed hippie chick. The range is always less then the onboard computer indices. And even short trips are an adventure.” DAD have the flat tow truck get me the battery is dead and i canot find a charging station” Trips have to be carefully planned (thinking ahead of time is not something Millennials can do) with the location of the nearest hard to find charging station in mind. And when the sucker runs out of battery plan on spending at least a hour jerking of at the battery destroying fast charge charging station