[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 35 (Wednesday, February 24, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Texas

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, we have had some bizarre weather in my 
State in the last week or so. We are still reeling from a deadly winter 
storm that hit all 254 counties in the State of Texas last week.
  The snowstorm brought snow, ice, and prolonged subfreezing 
temperatures. We don't have temperatures below zero in Texas--or at 
least we haven't for a long, long time, but we did last week. As a 
result, it paralyzed much of our critical infrastructure, leaving 
millions without electricity, leaving them without heat, and leaving 
them without running water for days on end.
  The good news is that power has now been restored for the vast 
majority of Texans, and cities are slowly lifting water boil notices as 
water filtration systems come back online.
  But a number of families are still facing outages, and as we have 
seen during previous disasters, low-income and minority communities are 
the hardest hit. Our top priority is to restore power and clean water 
to every single Texan.
  Throughout this episode--this tragedy, really--my staff and I have 
been in contact with local, State, and, of course, Federal officials to 
determine what kinds of things we can do to help and how we can 
mobilize resources as soon as possible. As recovery efforts continue in 
the coming days and weeks, I will continue to try to do that.
  This is not unlike what we have to do periodically for hurricanes 
that seem to find their way to the State of Texas. But in this case we 
know that some of the problem was not an act of nature; it was a 
failure to anticipate these subfreezing, subzero cold temperatures. So 
we have got to ask not only ``What happened?'' but ``How can we prevent 
it from happening again in the future?''
  As I said, we experience, from time to time, hurricanes, occasionally 
tornadoes and tropical storms or record-low temperatures, but we cannot 
allow our infrastructure to go offline for days on end.
  I want to thank the countless Texans who supported each other during 
this crisis. There are those that have gone above and beyond the call 
of duty in their official capacities, whether it is as first 
responders, emergency dispatchers, utility and energy workers, 
healthcare workers--the list goes on and on.
  But there are also the unsung heroes--those who invited neighbors 
into their homes, delivered hot meals to those in need, checked on an 
elderly neighbor, those who towed vehicles stuck in the snow, and so 
much more.
  I just want to assure all of my constituents that we are in this 
together, and we will do everything we can not only to find out how 
this happened but what we can do to make sure it never happens again.