New York Times: “Despite a hard-won experience with natural disasters like hurricanes, this was a whole new kind of misery in Texas, all the more distressing because it was so unfamiliar. Calls were coming into 911 and other law enforcement lines at three times the normal rate, said Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, from people desperately seeking advice about burst pipes, asking what the symptoms of hypothermia might be or just looking for some deliverance from the bitter cold.”
“Emergency workers, many leaving behind their own families in frozen and powerless homes, have had to respond to calls for assistance by navigating dangerously icy roads. Some of the direst situations will only be learned about in the days to come. ‘We’re fully expecting that when things start to thaw out and people start checking on each other that we’re going to find some people who didn’t make it through the storm,’ Mr. Spencer said. ‘We’ve responded to death calls, we’ve had suicides, we’ve had at least one homeless person who we believe died from hypothermia.’ But, he said, that is likely ‘just the tip of the iceberg.'”