When the lights went out at his neighborhood grocery store, Tim Hennessy knew he didn’t have much time. He told his wife, Deb, they should split up to cover more ground before the customers were inevitably asked to leave the premises.
This was the fifth day of the catastrophic freeze that pummeled almost every part of Texas in February 2021. As the state’s energy grid failed to keep up with demand, millions of homes and businesses lost power. Hundreds of people died, and property damage estimates reached the hundreds of billions. The power at the Hennessy house in Leander, just north of Austin, had flickered on and off since the first storm hit on Feb. 13, and—like so many other residents across the state—the family had gone several days without running water.
They’d stocked up on groceries before the roads iced, but Tim, a 63-year-old IT worker, noticed some fresh snow had fallen and figured driving might be slightly less treacherous in the first few hours of the storm. Not knowing when they’d get another opportunity, they had decided to make a quick run to the local H-E-B.
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