An autopsy should reveal the cause of death. I don't watch the news or follow much anymore... so I'm not sure what is going on with this story, if anything. 

Who is responsible for maintaining these resources then? Making sure the funds are available for needed repairs and upgrades and making sure there is a backup plan when needed? Those are the people that need to be looked at. I did hear on the radio yesterday that Texas was approximately 4 minutes away from a complete disaster on the power grid. Now that may not be entirely accurate because I was outside cleaning stalls and had the radio on and heard just bits and pieces of that so .... for those of us without power for 10 days it WAS a complete disaster, I can assure you that. We are STILL helping with clean ups , water damages and our stores are still not restocked with basics ... i.e. milk, bread .... we can live without either one ... I went yesterday to try to find milk for my mil ... shelves are bare still. I can't even find coffee creamer right now. I stopped at TSC yesterday and I'm friends with the cashier, she said people are returning generators... unused .. unopened.. she said several people bought more than 1 and are now returning the others ... I'd love to think that people bought more than 1 to help a neighbor or a family....   

The approxiamate four minute quote is accurate. This is being reported via various sources.

Now the why is the current question. And who to hold accountable for letting this situation unfold into the diaster it was, is also applicable!

"making sure there is a backup plan when needed"

Ok...Some may not like my answer to this...but it is up to ME/US to be sure we have a back up plan when needed.  

Perhaps because I was a Girl Scout and our motto is "Be Prepared"...or perhaps because I have lived in more rural areas most of my life...whatever the reason...I make sure I have some redundancy on the things we Need.

We re- piped our well to have access to both City water and Well water as one or the other may go out. (and they have) We also have a pond for potential emergency water hauling and a submersible pump.

Our well house is very well insulated as we did that a few years ago before a cold snap. And we can run a heat lamp on the generator. Exterior fucets are frost free

We have 2 portable generators and fuel on hand and when this storm was predicted we filled extra cans days ahead.

We spent many hours in the summer cutting, splitting, stacking wood and years ago installed a wood stove for supplemental heat.  

We keep a supply of bottled water and instant meals (Freeze dried food packages)

It just isn't unheard of for power to be out for days with a winter/ice storm or other severe weather. 

While I know this was some seriously crazy unheard of weather for some areas of Texas...those same areas get hurricanes etc that can and have knocked out power for long periods.  And I know not everyone can make these sort of preparations...but some folks did nothing to prepare themselves for the possibility of loss of power etc. 

 And I hate that they went through all of the challenges of that...but now the answer shouldn't be or shouldn't ONLY be looking at the utility companies etc for answers...it should also be a wake up call for some folks to make some changes and preparation to look out for themselves and their neighbors if they can.

1. You did the right thing

2. The Government is not your Momma, take care of you dayum self. 

3. Jeffery Epstien did not kill himself. 

I totally agree Trailgirl and we are definitely getting more prepared after this. I will tell you, us out here in the rural parts faired way better than those in the bigger cities.. we had several things on hand, water... food, propane and extra cans of fuel, kerosene lamps... now that I can breathe, I have made a list of things we have to get to be better prepared.  For us out here we usually go on a big shopping spree once a month and buy enough food, water etc etc to last several weeks because we don't live just up the street from a grocery store. We definitely became complacent, I'll be the first to admit that. In a perfect world people would know how to take care of themselves and their families and neighbors ... its just not that way anymore. I can't tell you how many times I heard people say "we can put a man on the moon with tinfoil and cardboard, but we can't keep the power on for our people, this is 2021"...  in fact my husband posted some information on a local Facebook page the information he got from his cousin, THE ONCOR LINEMAN, that people needed to shut off their heaters, and unplug everything they can while they were trying to get us power back.. they'd get us hot and it was overloading the breaker and knocking it out immediately because everything was starting up at once... he got jumped on by several people that this was unacceptable because this is 2021 and yada yada yada... what those people didn't understand was that our equipment out here hasn't been updated in several years..... there was a boom of folks moving out here over the last few years and building and they never updated the resources for the power equipment.. it was/is VERY OVERLOADED.  I brought that up to the mayor and the town busybody so it will be discussed in the next townhall meeting... ONCOR is responsible for upgrading us around here and was also responsible for contracting the tree trimming company that failed to do their job and make sure all power lines had been cleared from trees... again... someone dropped the ball big time on us too...  its in our best interest to prepare our homes and our supplies though and that's exactly what we are doing... 

The American people has gotton soft, just to dependent on the Goverment and others to take care of themselves.. if we did go into a Civil War lots of folks will be up a creek without a paddle.. Got to learn to take care of themselves and their familys. All ways be perpared for the worst. Thats how I look at it.

Do you live in Texas in the areas that were mostly impacted? Where you without power? I'm just curious... not being ugly, I just want to know if you were directly affected by this? Some people think they are prepared well but until you're actually going thru it, you suddenly realize you aren't as prepared as you should be or could be. Not everyone can afford a $800 generator or to stock pile fuel and propane and months worth of food at a time... not everyone lives on land that has tanks of water, or wells, some people live in small apartments with very little room to store extra water and supplies... not everyone can fill their deep freezers full of meat. It's just reality. We were prepared in a sense that we had insulated our pipes well so we didn't have busting pipes we insulated under our home as well to protect the pipes... we had ICE not snow... things were sealed shut... I couldn't even open the back of our horse trailer because it was literally sealed shut with ice. It was like nothing we had ever seen before out here. So our town was hit hard.... without power but the town over had sporadic power ..  we were told we would be having rolling blackouts for 45 minutes at a time that turned into 5 more days without ANY power. 

First of all, proving that he actually died from hypothermia, with certainty, is a tall order.  
1.) Everyone's body temperature falls when they die, unless the ambient temperature is very high.  I'm sure they have no documentation of his core temperature before he succumbed.  
2.) The actual usual cause of death in hypothermia is an arrhythmia like V-fib, or Asystole.  Unless he was on a monitor before dying, an arrhythmia can't be documented.  Everyone is in asystole after death. 
3.) An autopsy might reveal some findings that are consistent with hypothermia, such as findings in the lungs.  Only about 50% of the time is an actual cause of death (in cases of sudden unexplained death in kids) actually identified. The two commonest causes are cardiac arrhythmia (eg congenital or hereditary) or seizures.  

Citing hypothermia as the cause of death seems plausible, but in a court case looking at liability, that's going to be a tall order, knowing that sudden cardiac death or seizure will need to be ruled out.  That's impossible to determine without any known prior history after the child has died.  It's particularly questionable when the 3 year old sibling didn't suffer from hypothermia that we are aware of.  

They might settle this out of court but they won't get millions, because the defense can present an awfully good case, from what I can tell. 

I hate to keep harping on this, but much worse HAS happened here in Texas. The winter of '83-84 was much harsher. In Alice, Texas (Jim Wells county) it was at or below 11 degrees for 11 days. The Corpus Christi bay froze over, stock tanks froze over so thick my husband had to use a backhoe to break ice for cattle and deer. It was an ice storm, no snow. The ice was several inches thick, sometime 6+ inches thick, power lines and trees snapping all over the place. I was 20 years old and I remember breaking ice for the horses, feeding hay all day, and watering, too. We never lost our water pressure nor was the water turned off. Our electricity flickered, but never went out. Some people did lose power but not for long. The roads were iced over. Back then you only went out to eat occasionally so every one had food. There wasn't any panic buying after the freeze was over like has happened here this time.  Also, when the forecast said we were gonna freeze and it was going to be for more than a day, people were proactive and insulated their pipes and got extra supplies before the freeze hit. 
I don't know why the power companies weren't better prepared. My dad has some theories and I kinda agree with him on them. But a lot of people just didn't heed the warnings, either. I did see people getting pet food, pet beds and hay and feed for their animals, and the grocery stores were pretty busy, too. But the hardware stores looked the same as usual. 
There is plenty of blame to go around, we should have been better prepared, the power plants should have been better prepared, they had been warned and ignored the warning, and the refineries and water plants failed too. There are a lot of f questions that need to be answered. 

When I pay my electric bill every month, and if you are 1 day late, you get a $16-22 penalty on your next bill along with a lovely disconnect letter .. yes I've paid late before on an oversight... I look at the laundry list of FEES that we are being nickel and dimed to death.. I'd like to think all those extra fees are going toward maintenance, making sure our power is being looked after, whatever needs to be done is getting done... is that too much to ask from the electric providers??  Just a few random pics from around our area..