About a third of Texans still facing disrupted water supplies

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – Some 8.8 million people in Texas, about a third of the state’s population, still had issues with their water supply as of early Monday, authorities told Reuters, after a record-breaking freeze knocked out power stations last week.

Millions of Texans are still being advised to boil water before using, though all power plants were back online over the weekend and power had been restored to most homes as the weather returned to normal.

Officials in Houston, the biggest city in the state, said water there was safe to use without boiling as of Sunday.

“As of 7 AM Central Time Monday, more than 1,200 public water systems have reported disruptions in service due to the weather, many of them leading to Boil Water Notices. This is affecting more than 8.8 million people, in 199 Texas counties,” a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) spokesman said in an emailed statement.

“A total of 147 PWSs serving a population of just under 120,000 people are non-operational. In addition, 8 PWSs wastewater treatment facilities have reported as non-operational,” the spokesman added.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said late on Sunday that he had joined the Texas Air Guard, the Texas National Guard and the U.S. military to distribute water.

“About 3.5 million bottles of water have been delivered,” the governor said in a tweet.

A deadly winter storm caused widespread blackouts last week across Texas, a state unaccustomed to extreme cold, killing at least two dozen people and knocking out power to more than 4 million people at its peak.

Texas is also bringing in plumbers from out of state to help repair burst pipes, the governor said on Sunday. Homeowners or renters who do not have insurance may be able to seek reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), he said.

U.S. President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Texas on Saturday that makes federal funding available to people harmed by the storm, including assistance for temporary housing and home repairs and low-cost loans.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Gareth Jones)

UK defence minister says Russia looking to cause thousands of deaths in Britain

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with employees during a visit to the Gorbunov Aviation factory in Kazan, Russia January 25, 2018. Sputnik/Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin via

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s defence minister warned that Russia was looking to damage the British economy by attacking its infrastructure, a move he said could cause “thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths”, The Telegraph newspaper reported.

Relations between Russia and Britain are strained. Prime Minister Theresa May last year accused Moscow of military aggression and in December, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said there was evidence showing Russian meddling in Western elections.

Britain has also scrambled jets in recent months to intercept Russian jets near the United Kingdom’s airspace.

“The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach,” defence minister Gavin Williamson, tipped as a possible successor to May, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

“What they are looking at doing is they are going to be thinking ‘How can we just cause so much pain to Britain?’. Damage its economy, rip its infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths, but actually have an element of creating total chaos within the country.”

The Kremlin, which under Vladimir Putin has clawed back some of the global influence lost when the Soviet Union collapsed, has denied meddling in elections in the West. It says anti-Russian hysteria is sweeping through the United States and Europe.

Williamson said Russia was look at ways to attack Britain.

“Why would they keep photographing and looking at power stations, why are they looking at the interconnectors that bring so much electricity and so much energy into our country,” he was quoted as saying.

“If you could imagine the domestic and industrial chaos that this would actually cause. What they would do is cause the chaos and then step back.”

“This is the real threat that I believe the country is facing at the moment,” he said.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday that Williamson’s comments showed he had lost his understanding of what was reasonable, RIA news agency reported.

“It is likely he has lost his grasp on reason,” RIA quoted ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison)