Posted on 02/25/2021 6:22:47 AM PST by Renkluaf
As millions of Texans grapple with the aftermath and destruction caused by Winter Storm Uri last week, including struggling to find access to clean water and funds to clean up their flooded homes destroyed by pipes that burst as they froze and thawed, some are benefitting from the generosity of kind strangers who have dedicated their time, effort, and money to repair the state one pipe at a time.
Ashleigh Cedillo, a 36-year-old single mother in Lubbock, is one of the many people in Texas who faced no heat, no water, and burst pipes that flooded part of her home. Despite her unfortunate circumstances, Cedillo has also experienced the generosity and care of her fellow Texans as she works to return to normal.
Last summer, Cedillo’s air conditioning and heating unit broke, leaving her home with no internal temperature control other than space heaters to keep her home warmed in the winter months. So when record subzero temperatures and a blistering wind chill plagued the south plains last week, Cedillo and her 7-year-old daughter gave up trying to find more space heaters, which were sold out at many local stores, and sought shelter at a family member’s house for a few days with the hopes of staying warm.
“We made do with what we had,” Cedillo told The Federalist.
When she left her house early in the week, Cedillo said her kitchen sink faucet froze due to the increasingly dropping temperatures outside and in. It wasn’t until she received a phone call from her brother on Thursday that she realized the water pipes in her kitchen had burst, gushing water over her countertops and flooding her floors. While the water department acted quickly to shut off her water and prevent further damage to other areas of her home, Cedillo immediately knew the repairs were going to be costly.
“I don’t really have money for a plumber right now,” she said. “I have a sister. She allowed me to go over there, but of course, she has her own family and I don’t want to get in the way. And so I didn’t know [what to do].”
With her water turned off, no money to fix the catastrophe that struck her kitchen, and a sudden return to work and school after a crazy week, Cedillo and her young daughter were forced to get creative with how they would continue their daily lives, buying storage tubs from a local dollar store to carry and store water.
“I went to the neighbor on the corner and I’m like, ‘I don’t mean to bother you and this might sound strange, but can you fill this water up for me? This is what we use right now to flush our toilets,’” Cedillo explained.
The neighbor eagerly agreed to help, filling up the tub so Cedillo and her daughter could flush their toilets, take showers using plastic sacks with holes, and wash their faces. She also bought a case of water bottles to use for brushing teeth.
“I’ve heard there’s boiling notices like around the surrounding areas, and I just want to be safe with my daughter and just make sure that no matter what, we’re safe,” Cedillo explained.
When her daughter asked how long they would have to pull water from a plastic tub to complete their daily routines, Cedillo said she didn’t know.
“Today was the first day at school,” Cedillo told The Federalist on Monday. “We woke up 30 minutes extra just in case anything went wrong, but it worked out. I mean, we’re able to brush our teeth and we washed our face with it and then also to take a shower.”
Just as Cedillo started to settle into a routine without running water, a man and his wife, whose names she couldn’t remember, came to her house and offered to fix her pipes for free. In just one day, Cedillo’s water was up and running again.
“All I had was $30, and he didn’t even charge my card,” Cedillo said choking back tears. “I don’t know why he did it, but he just fixed it for me and he said, ‘Thank you and have a good day,’ and then went on about his business. … Texas takes care of Texas for sure.”
The man and his wife are Will and Raquel Arausa, who own and operate Flatland Plumbing in Lubbock, a “family-owned business with family values.” Together, they are offering their services to people in their community hit by the effects of the recent weather on a “pay what you can” basis.
The idea to provide gratuitous plumbing services to those in need first came to the Arausas two years ago after an elderly customer, whose home required thousands of dollars worth of repairs, requested Will’s help. At first, he told the woman he couldn’t do the job at the payment plan rate she suggested, but after stewing on it, Will ultimately decided to take a week off of his normal paid plumbing schedule to help her.
“I didn’t ask her for any money, I didn’t. … And she was so grateful,” Will told The Federalist. “She was just such a beautiful lady. It was awesome to see how appreciative she was of it.” It was the woman’s genuine gratitude for the act of generosity that Will said pushed him to keep up some of his free services.
“I got with my wife and we prayed over it, and I was like, you know what, we need to be doing this for our customers that can’t afford this because there is a need for plumbers that even the elderly, they can’t afford it,” Will said. “Plumbing is expensive, crazy expensive, so we came up with a couple of game plans.”
While Will said the plans didn’t always stick, he knew when the storm hit last week that it would be a prime opportunity to give back to the community and help anyone who needed it. The response, he said, was “overwhelming.”
“We started with [putting] a Facebook post out and telling our story about this lady that I did the work for and also offering the pay what you can or name your price,” Will said. “We were going to run it for a week from Friday to Friday. So we did that and we’re still getting calls from it now. … There’s so much need for it, but that’s where we’re at now and we’ve been running calls until 10 or 12:00 at night, since Thursday or Friday. We worked all the way through the weekend, taking care of customers, and we’ve still got a list of about 40 people left.”
Will, who is the only plumber at Flatland, is responding to the influx of calls from Texans all across his city by himself. “It’s a lot of work but we’re trying our best,” he said.
With all of that Lefty money flooding into Austin, you’d think there would be oodles of help.
Green Energy and all that jazz.
Oh... We are naming winter storms now???
Since when did that start happening?
These people need a simple lesson in turning off their water.
I had to turn on my AC yesterday.
That’s been happening for some time. It’s quite laughable here in Michigan where getting a storm of some degree every week wouldn’t be all that unusual.
“Winter storm Yvonne may drop up to two inches of snow on Tuesday”
When people stopped paying attention to that, we started getting “Polar vortexes” (AKA, winter). They have something else this year that means the same thing. If we had real comedians, they would have fun.
Yep, it was low 80s yesterday. What a difference a week makes. A week before I was cold and without power.
“Texas Takes Care of Texas”
When I read the title I was wishing for the story to be about the hanging of the energy czars and the EPA cronies involved.
* wouldn’t be all that unusual *
A 4.0 in California earthquake is mostly no big deal but a 4.0 on the East coast would be a BFD.
Up north you EXPECT that weather, it is rare here in Texas.
Winter storm naming in the United States has been used sporadically since the mid-1700s in various ways to describe historical winter storms.
In the 2010s, winter storm naming became controversial with The Weather Channel coming up with its own list of names for winter storms similar to that of hurricanes.
Entities from the United States government, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS), have stated that they would not be naming winter storms, and have asked others to refrain from doing so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_storm_naming_in_the_United_States
Me too. I had visions of ERCOT members being hauled off in handcuffs...
I took some of the thawed meat in my freezer to a friend, she can make use of it. A neighbor let me get a couple of jugs of water, saved me a 15 mile drive to an artesian well, when all I need is something to flush the toilet. I can get that from the lake if I have to. Drinking/cooking water is covered.
On my way to try and find pvc fittings later this morning, one I need was not in stock yesterday. That means another 50 mile round trip. For a part that costs about $1.59. Already spent over 20 bucks on parts and glue.
Heard about someone here helping people, two guys in a pickup truck, but don’t know any details, just that they are not taking people to the cleaners and gouging them for parts prices. Most of the neighbors here will help out any time.
While it was still frozen over a friend’s daughter came to check on me, I’ve known her since she was about 7 or 8. Mid 30’s now and 2 kids. She found out I was using the car to keep tbd cell phone charged, and was down to quarter tank of gas, gave me a full 2 1/2 gallon gas can. I refilled it a couple of days later and returned it. I didn’t ask, she just grabbed it out of the truck and said take it.
There are people who go out of their way to help in an emergency. We’ve had a half dozen tornadoes here, I can relate “good samaritan” stories from every time. People just throw the chainsaw and some gas in the truck and come out to cut everything out of the roads, nobody ever has to ask. One guy went back home and brought his tractor 3/4 mile back here to drag a tree trunk out of the road, while 2 other neighbors cut it up with chainsaws. I heard the 1st saw crank up when I walked out front to see what was blocking the road...4 vehicles stopped out front, that’s extremely unusual. I had been checking out back, more trees out there but none down. Glanced over the house, both trees in front still standing, never thought about a big oak from across the street...lightning hit it, split it a dozen feet down tbe middle, it broke off about 3 feet up and fell across the road. Over 2 feet in diameter. Nobody asked the guy to get a tractor, we were going to cut it into chunks we could handle. I was dragging limbs while they cut, here comes a tractor...HUH???
I know I heard the lightning, it was 100 feet from my front door. One of the ones where you hear and see it at the same time and it shakes the house...yep, that was close...freakin loud too. And of course, I was listening to that “train in the room” sound, so I knew a tornado was way too close...
I don’t like that sound...
Oh, no argument on that here. My point was the “Naming winter storms” has been happening for some time, no matter how mundane the “storm” is.
Unfortunately the carpetbaggers on the ERCOT board all resigned, grabbed their Texas stash, and returned to Yankee-land. Hopefully that action will not protect them from prosecution and/or lawsuits. The Lord only knows how much payola went into the pockets of that board to get them to push wind/solar so much. It was criminal.
Oh sorry, I misunderstood. :p
Do you also get fronts like Manitoba Mauler? Saskatchewan Screamer?
Amen to that. Angels walk among us.
To the woman in the article, a very simple solution to not having burst pipes is to turn the water off at the main and drain the pipes before going to her brother’s. Surprised her brother didn’t tell her or do it for her.
It’s a shame that so many suffered through the cold and now have $$$$ repairs that may take many months before they’re fixed. Many of the blackouts did NOT have to be. Especially the many long hours without power. We were so very, very lucky our power company wised up after 2-3 days and cycled on and off every couple hours which helped tremendously and very likely saved lives. I don’t know anyone in the neighborhood who had broken pipes. Everyone is on their own water well so when the power goes off, so does their water and toilets/septic so big thanks to the power company ignoring ERCOT. Thanks be, we also had a full pantry along with propane and kerosene.
Too many people didn’t have any food in their homes even with several days of being warned. One Austin woman in her mid to late 20s (recently from Boston - doesn’t it snow in Boston?) didn’t have anything to eat so strangers risked the roads to bring her food. From appearances and the neighborhood, she should have had the money to buy food in the days before the freeze hit.
A San Antonio woman was whining her fridge food rotted when she went to her parents’ house. Uh, like she couldn’t have taken the food with her to help with the parents’ food supply? As if she couldn’t set the food in the garage or outside in the freezing weather to stay cold before leaving home? Her parents had running water and a fireplace yet she had to bother the neighbors to heat a pot of water to warm the baby’s bottle. And the little infant was bored so whatever should she do?!? Hmm, you’d think maybe when he isn’t sleeping and eating she, her husband and the grandparents could keep him entertained.
Thanks for wise angels who help the rest.
I didn’t know, either.
I had my A/C on yesterday. It was in the 80’s.
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