{"id":68522,"date":"2024-06-09T16:49:12","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T21:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68522"},"modified":"2024-06-09T16:49:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T21:49:12","slug":"power-outage-causing-storms-are-on-the-rise-thats-already-impacting-food-insecurity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68522","title":{"rendered":"Power outage-causing storms are on the rise. That’s already impacting food insecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Power outage-causing storms are on the rise. That’s already impacting food insecurity<\/a><\/h3>\n

Major power outages have increased tenfold since 1980<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\"Straw<\/section>\n

Straw bales and storm\u00a0(Getty Images\/BalazsKovacs)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As rounds of\u00a0severe weather<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 complete with thunderstorms, hail and flooding \u2014 continue to pummel\u00a0Dallas and surrounding Texas counties<\/a>, many of the over 650,000 people who were left without power are grappling with the question of how they will afford to replace the food they lost in the nearly week-long outage. According to the Food and Drug Administration, perishables like\u00a0milk, eggs and meat\u00a0<\/a>can only keep cold for about four hours in an unopened refrigerator, meaning that for many Texans, the entirety of their fresh food supply had to go in the garbage.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

Just a few weeks ago, Community Food Share, a Colorado food bank that serves Boulder and Broomfield counties, lost 1,500 pounds of food during a windstorm with gusts up to 100 miles per hour, which prompted a preemptive power outage from Xcel Energy. It\u2019s a tremendous loss, but one that chief executive officer Kim Da Silva has cautioned could have been worse.<\/p>\n

“We were actually able to salvage almost all of the food that was in our freezers and our refrigerators,\u201d she told local Colorado television station\u00a0KUSA<\/a>. \u201cWhich we’re so thankful for that because that was about $80,000 worth of food.\u201d<\/p>\n

All in all, it was a stroke of luck, but with power outage-causing storms on the rise, luck can only go so far in preventing similar \u2014 and larger \u2014 losses, which means that food pantries are increasingly having to adapt their operations to account for the effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

As reported by\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>, many Americans think of power outages as infrequent inconveniences, however data shows that major power outages have \u201cincreased tenfold since 1980, largely because of an aging electrical grid and damage sustained from severe storms as the planet warms.\u201d …<\/p>\n<\/article>\n

\n
\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Power outage-causing storms are on the rise. That’s already impacting food insecurity Major power outages have increased tenfold since 1980 Straw bales and storm\u00a0(Getty Images\/BalazsKovacs) As rounds of\u00a0severe weather\u00a0\u2014 complete with thunderstorms, hail and flooding \u2014 continue to pummel\u00a0Dallas and surrounding Texas counties, many of the over 650,000 people who were left without power are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[34692,288,1574,9955],"class_list":["post-68522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-ashlie-d-stevens","tag-extreme-weather","tag-power-grid","tag-storms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68523,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68522\/revisions\/68523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}