Thousands of households in Texas have electricity and drinking water again

In the US state of Texas something is returning to normal after the super winter.  The  authorities have temporarily put water and power lines into operation.

After the historic onset of winter in the US state of Texas, thousands of households have been reconnected to the temporarily interrupted electricity and drinking water supplies.

 The  operation has normalized again and restrictions on energy consumption are no longer necessary, said the Texan network operator Ercot on Saturday in the short message service Twitter. However, more than 60,000 households were still without electricity.

 The re were also restrictions on the water supply.

 The  city of Houston continued to call on citizens to boil tap water before drinking it. In some places queues formed in front of churches or parking lots where drinking water was distributed.

 The  arctic cold in large parts of the USA hit the state of Texas, which is used to warm temperatures, hard – with chaotic consequences.

 The  power supply collapsed because the demand for heating increased massively and at the same time there were problems with energy production, among other things because of frozen pipelines.

 The  energy state of Texas – by far the largest oil and gas producer in the USA – is also almost the only state to have its own power grid that is decoupled from the rest of the country. According to media reports, at least 40 people died nationwide as a result of the cold spell.