DALLAS (AP) — Warmer temperatures spread across the southern United States on Saturday, bringing some relief to a winter weary region that faces a challenging clean-up and expensive repairs from days of extreme cold and widespread power outages.
In hard-hit Texas, where millions were warned to boil tap water before drinking it, the warm-up was expected to last for several days. The thaw produced burst pipes throughout the region, adding to the list of woes from severe conditions that were blamed for more than 70 deaths.
By Saturday afternoon, the sun had come out in Dallas and temperatures were nearing the 50s. People emerged to walk and jog in residential neighborhoods after days indoors. Many roads had dried out and patches of snow were melting. Snowmen slumped.
Linda Nguyen woke up in a Dallas hotel room Saturday morning with an assurance she hadn’t had in nearly a week: she and her cat had somewhere to sleep with power and water.
Electricity had been restored to her apartment on Wednesday, but when Nguyen arrived home from work the next evening she found a soaked carpet. A pipe had burst in her bedroom.
“It’s essentially unlivable,” said Nguyen, 27, who works in real estate. “Everything is completely ruined.”
Deaths attributed to the weather include a man at an Abilene health care facility where the lack of water pressure made medical treatment impossible. Officials also reported deaths from hypothermia, including homeless people and those inside buildings with no power or heat. Others died in car accidents on icy roads or from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.
Roughly half the deaths reported so far occurred in Texas, with multiple fatalities also in Tennessee, Kentucky, Oregon and a few other southern and midwestern states.
A Tennessee farmer died trying to save two calves from a frozen pond.
President Joe Biden’s office said Saturday he has declared a major disaster in Texas, directing federal agencies to help in the recovery.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, tweeted Saturday that she helped raise more than $3 million toward relief. She was soliciting help for a Houston food bank, one of 12 Texas organizations she said would benefit from the donations.
The storms left more than 300,000 still without power across the country on Saturday, many of them in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.