Your source for news in Hot Springs County
by Steven R. Peck, Publisher
Riverton Ranger, Feb. 18
The cold-weather emergency in Texas is more than a typical case of warm-weather residents shivering when the temperature drops into the 40s.
What’s happening there would be cold for Wyoming, too. But it would be pretty ordinary weather, and it sure wouldn’t paralyze us.
If there’s one moral to the story from the bursting pipes, frozen infrastructure and widespread power and water outages that are now stretching into their fifth day in that huge state, it’s this: Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
A look backward at news headlines over the past 30 years shows that while these ferocious periods of cold-weather are unusual in Texas, they are not unheard of.
This very same thing happened in 2011 and 1989. Both times, apparently, Texas leaders were urged to do what it took in that state’s energy infrastructure to guard against this happening again. They simply did not do it.
Even up on Thursday, four days after the cold weather arrived, a population larger than the entire state of Wyoming still can’t turn on the lights or even plug in a space heater.
Deciding that you’re going to have to endure a deadly cold-weather catastrophe every 15 years or so and just hope it’s not too bad is one way to administer public policy, we suppose, but watching residents of the Lone Star State burning their furniture to keep warm suggests that there might be a better way.
Enough about Texas. That boastful, superior-to-thou state either will or won’t learn from this and try to do better next time.
Meanwhile, and almost age-old lesson is there for the rest of us. There’s a lot of trouble possible in our lives even if we don’t go looking for it. But failure to plan for more or less predictable contingencies probably is the definition of looking for trouble.
So, with Texas as the model, think about what you might do in your household or your business or your church, or your school, or your family -- your life, in other words -- if some unexpected calamity arrived that prevented you from utilizing the normal, usually reliable, shared systems of public infrastructure that we all pretty much take for granted.
In Texas, we’re learning that lots of people don’t even have coats, much less snow shovels. Most of us in Wyoming have those. But how are you fixed at your house for backup supplies such as candles, matches, batteries, warm clothing, bottled water, basic medical supplies, a few extra bucks, and safe food that relies neither on cold nor heat?
Start there. Imagine what would happen if you couldn’t turn the heat on for a few days. Or the lights.
Or if a frozen pipe broke and started filling your living room with water.
Or if you couldn’t heat up dinner in the microwave.
Then do the few small things that would be required in order to get through that time of trouble.
If you never need those things, then you can grumble about that. But if you do, then you’ll be glad you made the effort.
In Texas, the political battles already are taking shape over this, and we can watch them fight it out as blame is assessed and consequences administered.
Meanwhile, we would advise the individual residents of Texas to acquire a winter coat and a pair of gloves, and lay in an extra jar of peanut butter.
Judging from both past history and past performance of their “higher” planners, this very thing probably is going to happen again.
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