From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.

I'm Alina Muhammad in for Martin Powers.

It's Friday, February 19th.

Today, what went wrong in Texas? And why coronavirus cases are dropping across the United States?

Letting everybody in Texas know that we know how much you have suffered over the past few days.

And we know the enormous challenges that you've been dealing with because of lack of access to power.

We've had everybody and every agency in the state of Texas to make sure that they were going to provide to you the power that you need and the power that you deserve.

Power has come back to most households across the state. There are still several hundred thousand folks who are still in the dark because of downed power lines and some other issues.

The problem now is water.

A releaseer Nandes covers Texas for the post.

I and 14 million Texans are under a boil water alert, meaning we don't know if the water is safe. And so we're having instead to boil it to be able to use it.

I myself have been conserving water for several days, boiling it whenever I have power and putting it into all kinds of jars and buckets that I have here to be able to do things like brush my teeth or

clean myself or cook even. And that's the situation where a lot of Texans find themselves right now.

It's Friday morning. Give us the latest.

It's been a terrible week for for Texans, you know, that some folks spent upwards of more than 50 hours without water and power in their homes.

Some retreated to hotels or you know to stay with friends who did have power or generator at least at their homes.

People didn't have those options, you know, they're also warming shelters and things like that. But with icy roads and conditions the way they were with the weather, you know, there weren't many people who could move themselves into warmer spaces.

And so you had situations across the state where people unfortunately were dying of hypothermia.

And do we have an estimated number of those deaths?

I think we will know more in the coming days. They're coming in little by little. I think the Washington Post has tracked more than two dozen so far.

And I think that number is probably going to climb. That includes a child in a trailer outside of Houston that apparently froze to death overnight while sleeping.

When his parents awoke the next morning, they found that the child wasn't alive. There's all kinds of horrific stories out there not to mention, you know, Texas has a real problem with folks who don't live in adequate housing.

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