Jackie Richards is a Prince George native that now works as an Assistant Track and Field Coach at the University of Texas in San Antonio.
Richards and her family were caught in the middle of the snowstorm that left millions of Texans without power and running water.
“For the temperature, I was definitely prepared but I was definitely not prepared to have no have no electricity or water for as long as I did,” Richards said.
Additionally, there were rolling blackouts throughout the city and grocery stores were left almost completely bare.
The storm took away her power and water for about 4 days, she says her Canadian roots left her and her family handling the chaos relatively well.
“I went outside with my kids and we played for two hours both times it snowed, I know many others ventured outside and many were just excited to see the snow,” she said, “however, a lot of Texans have never seen weather like this and were scared to death, but I was just playing with my kids!”
She says her Northern friends had a hard time comprehending the situation, adding, “I had friends contacting me saying, oh wow a little bit of snow left the entire state in disarray.”
However, the major issue was the US power system and the state just not being built for this type of weather.
“The temperatures initially just dropped into the teens (-7 to -10 degrees celsius) but compared to Prince George, the cold was nothing,” she explained, “one time I remember running a basketball practice at Duchess Park in -30 degrees Celsius.”
On February 10th, Richards and her track team were practicing when the temperature just dropped from about 20 degrees celcius to about 4 degrees celcius.
She says the day after, temperatures dropped even further, below 0 degrees celsius, and there was a tragic 109 car-pile up a few hours outside of San Antonio that caused 9 deaths.
“People were just not aware of road conditions and didn’t know about salting the roads,” she explained.
It wasn’t until Saturday (Feb 14th) when Richards got her power and water back.
During this time, Richardson and her team were preparing for Conference Championships in Alabama, and she wasn’t able to see her athletes for the week leading up to the competition.
However, after getting their flight cancelled, the team booked a bus and ended up making it to the tournament safe and on time.