Texas Tribune: “More than 100 low-income older and disabled residents of an Austin high-rise apartment building were stranded without power and with dwindling food supplies for more than two days after the electricity went out and the property’s emergency generator shut down on Monday. ‘Please help us, please,’ Farah Rivera, 58, a resident of the Rebekah Baines Johnson Center in East Austin, said early Wednesday. ‘We need whatever help we can get.’ Help arrived a few hours later, as Austin firefighters evacuated residents who wanted to leave, carrying them down long flights of stairs in some cases, to CapMetro buses waiting to transporting them to a church shelter a few miles away, said Sergio Amaya, vice president of DMA Properties.”

“Shortly after the evacuation began, the emergency generator was restored and one elevator began working, speeding up their efforts to get people out of the freezing tower. Residents bundled up in blankets and head scarves and layers of clothing, some using walkers and carrying red-and-white H-E-B grocery bags filled with belongings as they boarded buses or left with family. ‘We are, right now, going floor to floor with the Austin FD determining who wants to go to the warming center and helping us bring them down from their floors,’ he said. Millions of Texans were still without power on Wednesday, some of them for the third straight day, as the partial collapse of the state’s power system plunged them into darkness during a storm that saw inches of snow and ice and wind chills below zero. Particularly hard hit are vulnerable residents, those that can’t leave their homes, or can’t afford hotels, or have otherwise limited resources and mounting medical needs.”