The mayor of a small Texas town has resigned after telling anxious residents on social media to fend for themselves as below-freezing temperatures knocked out water, electricity and heat to millions of homes across the state.
After the deadly polar vortex gripped the region for more than 24 hours, desperate Colorado City residents became outraged and took their anger to a community forum on Facebook where they criticized officials for not taking more decisive actions during a natural disaster.
Many voices wondered whether the city leaders planned to open warming shelters and also expressed concern about firefighters being able to do their jobs without running water.
But when Colorado City Mayor Tim Boyd became aware of the dissatisfaction with his handling of the crisis, he lashed out in a Facebook post Tuesday, telling citizens local government had no responsibility to help them during the historic Arctic snowstorm that has killed about 20 nationwide, with at least 10 deaths reported in Texas since Monday, according to the Houston Chronicle.
“Let me hurt some feelings while I have a minute!! No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Boyd wrote Tuesday in a now-deleted Facebook post, according to The Washington Post. “Nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”
Many social media users took screenshots of the tirade — laden with misspellings and grammatical errors — and shared it widely across all platforms.
In his rant, Boyd berated the town of about 4,000 residents as “lazy” and told them to “step up” with their own game plan to save themselves.
“If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your [sic] lazy is direct result of your raising! Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish.”
Boyd made the statement after authorities across Texas had ordered residents to stay off roads and shelter in place until power could be restored.
Boyd’s comments caused an immediate backlash, with many pointing out that electricity is a paid service and not a handout for the city’s residents.
Boyd resigned his office the same day and issued a defiant apology, saying he should “have used better wording.”
“I won’t deny for one minute what I said in my post this morning,” he wrote. “Believe me when I say that many of the things I said were taken out of context ... I apologize for the wording and some of the phrases that were used!”
Boyd then complained that his wife had been fired from her job due to his comments.
The fallout after one of the worst winter storms in decades exposed the state’s decision to circumvent federal regulations by operating its own power grid, leaving it vulnerable to this week’s devastating winter blast. Texas is the only state in the continental United States that has its own power grid not connected to a shared energy network, according to reports.
Nearly 3.3 million residents in Texas still lacked electricity as of Wednesday morning, while outages in other states were only less than one-tenth that size, the Post reported.
Grid operators said they couldn’t predict when the lights might come back on. An investigation is underway into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
Colorado City is in between Abilene and Odessa in West Texas. The Post said the area is best known for high school football and oil field jobs.
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