What Did Fort Worth Learn From The 2021 Winter Storm? City Staffers Explain

Arlington TX

22 February, 2022

6:58 PM

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By Rachel Behrndt, Fort Worth Report February 21, 2022 The Fort Worth water department had all hands on deck in February 2021, attempting to respond to the challenges of Winter Storm Uri as one water treatment plant went down – and then another and then another and another. The power outage forced over 300,000 Tarrant County residents to boil their water, while other residents were left without any water at all. The memories of the February storm remain fresh in the minds of every city employee, Chris Harder, head of the Fort Worth Water Department, said. "That whole day Feb. 15, 2021, was spent trying to get power restarted to the plants," Harder said. "And then on top of that, it was super frustrating because when power did get restored, the plants had been down for so long that many of the piping had frozen up." Before February 2021, the water department thought it had safeguards in place to prevent catastrophic failures. Each of the four water treatment facilities that went down were in different parts of the city, connected to different parts of the power system with two different power feeds. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.