大俠行天下日記 我見我聞我思 02/20

我們變成了第三世界國家

過去一週的寒流侵襲， 我們已經成為第三世界國家了， 雖然供電已經在週五大體恢復 ，但是全德州的自來水一半以上需要煮開後才能飲用， 百分之三十以上的家庭水管爆裂 ，許多家庭被水淹得不堪入目。

休斯敦全市之各大超市有長長的人群在排隊搶購飲用水、 麵包及食物 ，各級政府也在昨天開始在廣場上發放免費食水。

由于各家水管破裂情況非常嚴重， 修水工人極度缺乏， 有的排到二三天以後 ，如果沒有自來水， 所有餐廳小吃都無法營業， 這已經是將近五天時間了他們要如何支撑下去。

從新冠病毒到嚴寒氣候， 真的把美國打倒了， 多年來失修的基礎建設、 清潔能源 ，都是大問題。

今天在街頭上看到的凄涼情況， 我們和第三世界有什么不同呢 ?

We Have Become A Third World Country

We are like a third world country. For one week the winter snow blast has attacked us in Texas. Finally, we are in the 40’s, which is still cold for those of us Texans who have never experienced it before. At one point, more than 1.4 million Houstonians’ homes were freezing and without any electricity. By Friday, CenterPoint Energy said that more than 99.7 percent of homes got their power back.

For the last couple of days, because of the city’s water issue, we saw long lines of people lined up in front of super markets for food and drinking water. The efforts have included city and county government giveaways of water to the people who needed it.

A lot of restaurants and small businesses, because of the lack of power and water, have had to close for almost a week. How can these people survive in such a difficult time?

At such a critical time as this, we can see that a lot of our infrastructure is really out of date. When we faced the severe cold weather, especially for Texas, we just can’t make it.

Times are very tough for a lot of us. We hope the new administration will start a new project to update our infrastructure here in Texas. We really need to take dramatic steps to solve the energy problem. Then when the winter comes, we can solve the problem.