So for many without power in Texas and that are now without water, let me break it down for you.

ERCOT just up and shut down the power for most of Texas. They did this with NO, NONE, ZERO discussion with your local government.

We (local govt) were prepared...we had generators

We had fuel. We tested the generators, double checked our supply lines. ERCOT literally just flipped the switch. Zero consideration for hospitals and other facilities in the area, no communications.

OK, fine. We had backup power. We ran that backup power literally until it died or ran out of fuel. We had contracts with emergency fuel suppliers. They can not deliver because...they don't have power to fuel their trucks.

We got on conference calls with government elected officials and executives from local energy providers. We were told...NOPE, you are not getting power, period. We begged. We told them that our nursing homes and hospitals were without power for 30 plus hours. Nope, too bad

So...we begged, borrowed and horse traded with local contractors to get parts, to get fuel. We moved animals from shelters to our jail cells, we had to heat fire departments and other emergency facilities with propane heaters

We had more calls where we begged and pleaded. For the love of GOD, we are OUT of water. We can't fight fires. We can't flush the toilets at our emergency shelters. Nope...you can't have power.

We kept staff away from their homes for days while water pipes broke and flooded THEIR homes. We had other staff working remotely from cell phones with no power and no heat. We shuffled staff from one building to another as each continued to lose power...all while we begged

I will stop now but I wanted you to hear it from me EXACTLY what we have gone through to try and keep your water flowing and other essential services going while we ALL froze.

OK, so one more. Can you imagine how demoralizing it must be to be in a warming shelter...go to the restroom and see an "Out of Order" sign and then have to go to the freezing cold parking lot to use one of the Port-a-Potties that we were able to obtain at the last minute?

Update: First let me clarify, I said that they "literally" flip a switch in the first tweet...they dictate the load shedding, I do not know if there is really a switch.

Second...we do have power restored at many facilities...SORT OF.

While we have had power come back up at many locations, we also lost it at many others at the same time. The energy provider DID finally start communicating with us and DID warn us this would happen.

Unfortunately, they can not tell you WHERE the next rolling outage will be. According to them, that is not controlled by them. Here is a great example.

At around 12:30PM CST they turned off a circuit that INSTANTLY killed power to approximately 40 of our sewage pump stations. We only have just over 60 so..yes, they instantly killed 66% of our pumping ability.

Included in that same outage was our City Hall where we were temporarily housing Public Works team responding to these issues. We had to immediately move them to another location...one where they were moved out of the night before for the same issue.

We are not the only ones experiencing this. Just Google Boil Water Notice Texas and you will see that most public drinking water systems in the State are in the same situation.

My fellow Public Works Directors in the area have been in constant contact for over 24 hours begging and borrowing to help each other. "Hey XXXX, I need 10,000 gallons of water for xx hospital, can you help?"

"Sure Clarence. we can help with that but I don't know for how long. We have a major pipe break somewhere that is really messing up our pressure but we can't find it...can you help"

"Yes sir, I will have our best leak guy heading your way ASAP".

On the private side, the local hospital system is COMPLETELY full. They are turning away anything that is non life threatening. The medical staff working there are running out of food, water, supplies and have not showered since Sunday.

This includes my oldest daughter, her aunt, uncle, mother and many friends. Normally in disasters the local community teams up and floods the hospitals with hot meals and supplies. Unfortunately, the restaurants aren't open because there is little to no water in Houston.

They were finally able to venture out of the hospital yesterday but by that time of night the stores were closed and empty of supplies so they started going to everyone's homes and emptying their own pantries to take back to the hospital to feed everyone.

I will add some more later but I am hoping the first hand account helps many of you see what it is like for local government staff, leaders, first responders and medical teams during something like this.