Cold Weather

As warmer weather may make last winter's storm a distant memory, questions linger about what went wrong with the City of Austin's response — and who is ultimately responsible.

The blackout continues to haunt those who experienced it.

When utilities talk about "customer" outages, they are talking about electric meters that are out. There's usually more than one person affected when a meter goes down.

The Shah family has been without power for a week. The outage comes nearly two years to the day after their mother died of hypothermia.

Live oaks and Ashe Junipers appeared to be especially hard hit by the ice. One reason is that they don't lose their leaves, providing more surface area on which ice can accumulate.

We're planning to host a radio town hall with representatives from Austin Energy, the City of Austin and KUT reporters in the coming days.

About 20,000 customers were still without power Monday afternoon. Austin Energy says it can't guarantee restoration to all customers by Sunday because some damage was severe.

"We are now focusing on the most complicated & time-consuming restoration efforts. Incoming wind & rain will pose additional challenges," the utility said in a tweet. General Manager Jackie Sargent said the city was dealing with "hurricane-level devastation."

The city-owned utility had no estimate on when power would be fully restored.

More than 100,000 Austin Energy customers didn't have electricity as the sun set Friday. They're filling beds with stuffed animals to keep warm, putting in contacts by candlelight and storing groceries in coolers.