WACO, Texas (KWTX) – The Texas winter storm of 2021 caused significant damage to homes, businesses and vehicles across the state, and more than a year later, insurance companies and the state’s energy provider are still battling over who should foot the bill.
As pipes burst, electrical breakers flipped and heaters malfunctioned during the freeze of 2021. There were men and women braving the dangerous icy conditions as they rushed to the rescue of impacted homeowners: electricians, roofers and plumbers.
Mike Stass, of Mike Stass Services in Waco, was one of them.
“On a normal day, when its 72 degrees out, we might get 40 to 50 calls a day,” said Stass. “But during those days, those freeze days, it was 120 to 200 calls a day,” he said.
In the wake of the storm, Stass’ crew worked from sun rise until well after sunset, despite treacherous road conditions. After surviving the dangerous roads to fix busted pipes and broken water heater tanks, they were faced with another challenge: supply chain issues caused by the pandemic made access to supplies difficult.
“We would call for a customer that needed a part and we would be told by our supplier that it could be three to ten weeks before we even saw their parts,” Stass said, “And that happened a lot with water heater parts. So you can imagine people being without hot water for months.”
Statewide, the numbers reflecting the damages are even more alarming as insurance claims mounted.
Statewide Losses From Texas’ Winter Storm Uri 2021
“Overall, there were 500,00 claims and, of those, 85 percent were those property claims which is like burst pipes, roof damage,” said Rich Johnson, a spokesperson for the Insurance Council of Texas.
Data from the Texas Department of Insurance revealed ten percent of the 500,000 claims were commercial, 3.5 percent were on personal auto physical damage policies and 0.9 percent were other insurance types.
Comparatively, the damages from Winter Storm Uri total about half of those from Hurricane Harvey, the state’s costliest storm, which resulted in an estimated $20 billion in damages.
Texas Winter Storm Uri Claims by County(Texas Dept. of Insurance)
Johnson and the Insurance Council of Texas estimate about 10 percent of the insurance claims filed for Winter Storm Uri are still outstanding.
But while most homeowners have received their payout from the insurance companies, many others like Renee Pace, with no insurance and no money for out of pocket repairs, struggled to repair the damage.
Pace spent nearly a year with no running water in her Bruceville-Eddy home.
“It was working till the lines busted,” she said, showing the dried up pipes connected to her bathroom. She says her pipes froze during the storm and busted days later.
“Now, I just buy water and boil it on the stove,” Pace said. “I go once a week to Hewitt to the laundromat.”
KWTX first reported Pace’s story in December 2021, almost a year after the storm. Since then, volunteers have rallied around to fix her plumbing, water heater and other issues free of cost.
And even for the property owners whose insurance companies have paid for their repairs, the battle is not over.
More than 130 insurance companies have sued the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which is the state’s energy provider, as well as dozens of power generators.
That lawsuit, which was filed in Travis County District Court in late December, alleges that these power generating entities were “at fault,” by failing to adequately prepare for the storm.
In early January, the state estimated the final death toll from the storm to be 246 people.
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