Negligence and Nature Lead to Tragedy

On February 16, 2021 an 11 year old boy, Cristian Pineda, died in Texas of hypothermia after a mind blowing winter storm blew all through the state.

Pineda was born in the coastal  city of Tela, Honduras but later moved to Texas to be with his mom who he’d not seen in over a year at the time. During the couple of days before his passing he experienced snowfall for the first time in his life, playing outside for over an hour and a half.

After the devastating loss of her son, the mother of Cristian Pineda filed a death lawsuit against electric companies for $100 million dollars. The mother is accusing the Texas power providers Electric Reliability Council of Texas (EROTC) of gross negligence resulting in the death of her son, when the child suffered from hypothermia because their family lost electricity and heat during a cold snap. The electric company had previous information about the storm and was told to winterize its power grid, a request they seemingly ignored. The result of ignoring that request left more than 4 million customers without heat as some places the temperature fell into the single digits. Other families that had lost loved ones said they would be filing more lawsuits towards the electric companies.

People were not only losing their life because of hypothermia, but some died because of carbon monoxide poisoning. In order to keep warm they were letting their cars run in their garage; then the people of the family would go outside and sit in their garages. It was their only resort to keep warm when their body heat under a blanket wasn’t enough. This surprising cold wave should not have had the impact on Texas that it did, with information to warn them, the state of Texas should have been more prepared, resulting in less deaths and more people safe in their homes.