Austin mayor apologizes as city struggles to restore power

AUSTIN, Texas — Widespread power outages in the Texas capital stretched into a third day Friday for thousands of residents following that was spiraling into a management crisis as city leaders remained unable to say when all the lights would come back on.

While New England began shivering and closed schools under an Arctic blast expected to bring the coldest weather in a generation, temperatures finally started to moderate Friday and bring some relief to Austin, where at any given time about 30% of customers in the nation's 11th-largest city have been without electricity since the ice storm swept into Texas late Monday.

“I just honestly think they were not prepared for any of this,” said Edward Kim, 43, whose home had been without power or heat since Wednesday. He was using a generator to keep his house “on life support,” while his wife took her 7-year-old daughter to her office to get a shower. Energy experts said Austin's dense tree canopy made the outages caused by fallen trees and iced-over power lines more widespread. Most power lines are overhead, and Austin officials said burying existing lines would be expensive and more difficult to repair.

There have been no reports of deaths from this week's power outages, though the storm and freeze have been blamed for at least 12 traffic fatalities on slick roads in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Wind gusts began cutting power Friday to some homes in New England, and many communities opened warming shelters, including in Maine and Connecticut.

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