Despite Reforms, the Texas Electricity Grid Is Still Vulnerable to Cold

Gov. Greg Abbott has promised the lights will stay on this winter. But many of the problems that led to the power system failure in February remain.

ABILENE, Texas — Donna Boatright lives alone now in the modest one-story house where her husband, Benny, froze to death. Each day, she lights a candle by his photograph. Before bed, she tells him good night.

A slim 60-year-old who worked at the inn on a nearby Air Force base and let his beard grow each winter, Mr. Boatright died in his bed under layers of blankets, not long after a massive power failure plunged millions of Texans into the bitter cold and darkness in February. “I found him,” Ms. Boatright, 73, said. Her own fingers were so frozen she had to be hospitalized.

Mr. Boatright was among more than 200 people in Texas who died after the state’s power grid failed during one of the worst winter storms in state history. Homes turned frigid. Water systems stopped running. Emergency workers struggled just to communicate.