An 11-year-old boy has lost his life in Texas after he froze in his home during the extremely cold weather that hit the state last week.
Cristian Pavon Pineda was found dead in his bed next to his brother, who survived. It is thought that electricity and heating had been cut-off due to the weather. The family has now launched a $100 million lawsuit against the energy provider ERCOT for failing to give appropriate guidance to customers.
The death of the boy is among 30 others in the state who have lost their lives over the last week. During the weather outage, as many as 14 million people were left without running water and as many as 4.5 million customers of ERCOT were left without power and heating. Many others were left with astronomical domestic electricity bills, some as high as $17,000, after the energy providers cranked up their prices.
On a GoFundMe page set up by the boy's family, stating:
"Due to low temperatures seen in the Conroe area, this family went without electricity for two days. The early morning of February 16 dropped to 12 degrees. Cristian was found lifeless. We are trying to raise funds to be able to transfer the body to Honduras. His wish was to see his grandparents again and that is what the mother wants to fulfill, please help with whatever you can in order to hopefully be able to achieve this, God bless you."
The fundraiser has raised almost $90,000.
In another tragedy, a grandmother and three children died in a house fire after they started a fire to stay warm when their power was cut-off. Their deaths are being blamed by their family on the electricity companies being unprepared. Vanessa Kon, the childrens' aunt, told reporters:
"We don't know what happened. We don't know why the lights went out like that. The city should have been prepared for it. Why was the power off? If the power wasn't off, this wouldn't have happened. This is a tremendous loss to my brother, their father, to all of us, and we are trying to live and deal with this unbearable pain."
Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Texas but says that he will not travel immediately to the state. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said in a statement:
"He's also very mindful of the fact that it's not a light footprint for a president to travel to a disaster area. He does not want to take away resources or attention. And we're going to do that at an appropriate time in coordination with people on the ground. Could be as soon as this week."
[h/t: I heart Intelligence]
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