![]() ![]() Greg Abbott to harden the state’s infrastructure to avert another deadly disaster.Ībbott’s press secretary, Renae Eze, did not respond to questions about the significantly higher death toll or whether the state would investigate further, but said Abbott was “working collaboratively with the House and Senate to find meaningful and lasting solutions to ensure these tragic events are never repeated.” The high death toll adds pressure on state legislators, energy regulators, and Texas Gov. And without an official acknowledgment tying their loved ones’ deaths to the storm, families will be unable to claim federal assistance for funeral costs. For Mary Gonzales, the delay in obtaining a cause of death for her husband meant she was unable to claim an income from his pension for almost three months. This confusion also poses real economic challenges for survivors. ![]() ![]() Interviews revealed stories of anguish and confusion, as families struggled to find out exactly how their relatives died. Read more about the BuzzFeed News analysis of Texas storm deaths.īuzzFeed News reached out to relatives of people who died during the power outages, identified from dozens of wrongful death lawsuits as well as death reports obtained from public records requests to medical examiners in eight of the biggest counties in Texas. Neighboring states that were hit hard by the winter storm but did not experience the widespread power outages seen in Texas did not show a spike in deaths. Even the lowest end of the range is almost three times the number officials have acknowledged. Our best estimate is that 702 people were killed by the storm that week. Our analysis, reviewed by three independent experts, suggests that between 426 and 978 more people than expected died in Texas in the week ending February 20 alone. It relies on a method called “excess deaths” analysis, recently used to estimate the full toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. The BuzzFeed News analysis of deaths during the storm is based on mortality data from the CDC. “I still believe the cold made him to where his heart just gave out,” she said. She believes that the medical examiner’s explanation is incomplete, and that her husband of 58 years didn’t have to die that day. And he had recently recovered from a bout of COVID-19.īut Mary said he was stable up until the storm, pointing to the fact that he was able to drive himself to dialysis. He wore a special vest to detect if his pulse became irregular. Mary, 74, knew that her husband had at least some of these problems. So the retired maintenance worker turned his Dodge Ram around and headed back to the mobile home he’d shared with his wife, Mary, in the small town of Arcola, Texas, for nearly 20 years. As dawn broke on February 15, he made his way to one of his regular dialysis appointments, only to find that the clinic had lost power and was closed. This was the case for 80-year-old Julius Gonzales, his family believes. But without the intense cold and stress they experienced during the crisis, many of these people could still be alive today. Many of the uncounted victims of the storm and power outages were already medically vulnerable - with chronic conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and kidney problems. This astonishing toll exposes the full consequence of officials’ neglect in preventing the power grid’s collapse despite repeated warnings of its vulnerability to cold weather, as well as the state’s failure to reckon with the magnitude of the crisis that followed. But by looking at how many more people died during and immediately after the storm than would have been expected - an established method that has been used to count the full toll of other disasters - we estimate that 700 people were killed by the storm during the week with the worst power outages. The state’s tally currently stands at 151 deaths. A BuzzFeed News data analysis reveals the hidden scale of a catastrophe that trapped millions of people in freezing darkness, cut off access to running water, and overwhelmed emergency services for days. The true number of people killed by the disastrous winter storm and power outages that devastated Texas in February is likely four or five times what the state has acknowledged so far. ![]()
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