Some 20 deaths, four million households without electricity and 13 million people being forced to boil their water: a black result in Texas after the catastrophic winter storms that paralyzed the United States.

Suddenly, Texas, an otherwise hot state, was hit by several decimetres of snow and cold temperatures.

About 240,000 households are still without electricity.

"A catastrophic power outage"

Now the Texas Tribune reports that a much worse disaster was imminent.

According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot, the state's largest electricity company), the electricity grid was "seconds and minutes" from an accident that had risked knocking out the electricity for several months.

"Our operators acted to prevent a catastrophic power outage that had caused our system even worse damage," Bill Magness, chief operating officer at Ercot, told the Texas Tribune.

Chaotic situation

But the danger is not over.

According to NBC News, residents in Texas testify about how they are met by empty shelves when they try to buy food and water (many water pipes and the like have been damaged by the cold weather).

The situation at the Texas treatment plant is described as "chaotic" and President Joe Biden has tweeted about his support:

"Tonight, I called Governor Greg Abbott to discuss the current situation in Texas and to identify things we can do to help the state recover from this storm."

Has opposed the vaccination

According to the National Weather Service, the cold temperatures are expected to continue to plague residents over the weekend.

At the same time, CNBC reports that the winter storm is a severe blow to the distribution of vaccines against covid-19.

- It is obviously a problem, the pace has slowed down and in some places it has slowed down completely.

We simply have to compensate for this as soon as the weather eases a bit and the ice melts so that we can get trucks and people out, says the White House's medical adviser Anthony Fauci to the channel.