Over the past week, millions of Texans have endured a catastrophic winter storm that has largely done its damage by crippling the state’s unprepared infrastructure.
According to The Weather Network , this left an estimated 2.7 million households without power and has seen water pipes burst after dealing with the deep freeze.
And as we’ve recently seen, even many of those who had power have faced potentially ruinous charges on their electricity bills due to companies offering energy plans tied to market prices.
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Yet the worst consequence from this disaster has concerned the at least 30 deaths that The Guardian reported as emerging from the cold snap, either as a result of hypothermia or from carbon monoxide poisoning resulting from desperate attempts to stave off the cold.
And while it remains unconfirmed that one 11-year-old boy died as a result of the crisis, the likelihood that he did has compelled his family to take legal action against those they believe could have prevented this.
On Monday, February 15, 11-year-old Cristian Pavon Pineda was frolicking outside his family’s trailer after a major snowfall.
As The Houston Chronicle reported , this marked the first time he had seen snow in the two years since he had moved to Conroe, Texas, from Honduras.
Nonetheless, his gloves became soaked after about a half-hour and his mother, Maria, led him back inside. By 11 pm that night, he would be tucked in next to his three-year-old stepbrother in a trailer that hadn’t had any power — and by extension, heat — since the morning.
As his mother told the newspaper, “Everything was well. He was happy that day. He was not at all sick.”
But the next day, Pineda’s family would not be able to wake him up.
![Image credit: Reddit | [deleted]](https://static.diply.com/l8kAwsZXyEII2f7P00YB.png)
As ABC News reported , despite efforts to call 911 and resuscitate him, it was clear that he had passed away some time during the night. The toddler was reportedly unharmed.
When investigators examined the scene, they found that the trailer was 40 years old and did not have much in the way of insulation. It’s also worth noting that overnight temperatures at the time had dipped down to the single digits.
These facts have led the family to suspect that Pineda died due to hypothermia.
However, an official confirmation of this cause of death may have to wait for several weeks; the Conroe Police Department conducted an autopsy on February 18, according to The Houston Chronicle .
As ABC News reported, attorney Tony Buzbee is now representing the Pineda family in a lawsuit against the power company Entergy and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). They are one of seven families who have hired him after losing a family member to the winter storm.
The lawsuit seeks $100 million and accuses Entergy and ERCOT of gross negligence in advance of the crisis.
As the lawsuit states, “Despite having knowledge of the dire weather forecast for at least a week in advance, and the knowledge that the system was not prepared for more than a decade, ERCOT and Entergy failed to take any preemptory action that could have averted the crisis and were wholly unprepared to deal with the crisis at hand.”
The statement refers to the failure of power companies like Entergy, as well as ERCOT itself, to winterize the state’s power infrastructure in the wake of a similarly harsh winter storm in 2011. The suit also accused ERCOT of misleading customers as to how long the blackouts resulting from this issue would last, as they would end up persisting for days at a time.
As for Pineda, his family is now working to transport his remains to Honduras, where his grandparents and many other members of his family live.
As his mother told The Houston Chronicle , he had longed to see them and one day dreamed of building a small house for them in Honduras so the whole family could be together.
But the goal now, she said, is to “bury him and have them see him one last time.”
A GoFundMe campaign for this purpose, launched on February 19, has raised over $88,000 by the time of this writing.
h/t: The Houston Chronicle , ABC News
