From another viewpoint

 Friends Jim and Deon Spangler are in Trails End this year and I thought you might like to read her viewpoint.

Barb

 From Deon:

A quick update on what is happening down here in the Rio Grande Valley. Unheard of record low temperatures, no power and now a potential gas shortage!

This is historic to say the least. It was in the low 20s this morning and the power in our park has been off for 36 hours. It is supposed to be a rolling power outage but this has not rolled, just been a steady no-power situation. The Dollar General across the street was closed yesterday and today and if the power doesn't come back on will be closed tomorrow too.

We have our generator which has provided us power to have plenty of heat from the gas furnace, lights, TV, etc. We got one of our propane tanks filled again this morning (had filled one yesterday too) and after driving around for two hours this morning finally found a gas station that we could manage to get into to fill our gas can to keep the generator running. They are now saying there is, or will be, a gas shortage as people are using their cars to go out and sit in to try to get warm.

Some of the Magnolia people I think may have found a motel that had rooms and power. Both are in short supply that's for sure. Harpers are in their motor home as that has a generator. Susan Van Houweling is here in her motor home which I'm sure also has a generator. I think Carmen Friesen is over at her son, DeWayne's house as he lives just across the street from her. As far as the rest of the Magnolia people, I do not know how they are faring. Chet & Irma are managing quite well and everyone is very hopeful that we will power restored at least for a while tomorrow.

We took a quick walk up to the dumpster area and noticed that a few of the mobiles now have large generators sitting outside and running and those people have lights on, otherwise it is totally dark although when I look out one of our windows I can see lights over to the west of us. It is interesting where the outages are as there does not seem to be any reason why one spot has power and the next one doesn't.

As far as I know, Magnolia Village over in Donna has power and water, or at least the last I heard, they did.

The store shelves in Walmart are empty of bread and milk and I imagine short on other things too. 

This event will be talked about for a very long time and the news is saying there will be an investigation into why there are many hundreds of thousands of Texans without power.

I hope that wherever you are, whether up north or down here in the valley somewhere, that you are staying warm and safe.