Our Community Works Together to Save Each Other When the State of Texas Can’t
By: Carol Lennox
Tags: Heroes, This Happened To Me, Culture, Society, Community Engagement

Our Community Works Together to Save Each Other When the State of Texas Can’t

Photo of Nabil Yazdani holding water bucket in the melting snow after the temperatures rose. Photo by author.

Nabil Yazdani is a hero. He didn’t wear a cape. He wore a mask, a coat, and shoes that weren’t snow and ice proof, as he knocked on my door on Monday February 15, 2021. He was checking to make sure I was okay, even though I’d never met him, and to ask if I wanted to join a phone tree he was starting to connect the neighbors in our apartment building and a couple of the closer ones. Texas was having an unprecedented power outage during a major freeze.

When he knocked, I was wearing two layers of fleece lined tights under sweatpants, two pair of socks, a thermal shirt and two sweatshirts I had worn to bed the night before when the power went out. I would wear that or some combination night and day for the next five days of below freezing temperatures outside, and as cold as 36 to 44 degrees inside the apartments.

I was starting to feel scared and alone when he knocked on my door. I could almost see the headlines, “Single Woman Found Dead of Hypothermia Covered in Five Blankets and Two Cats.”

So I answered the door to a masked stranger, who shortly become my angel, and that of over 70 residents in 15 buildings.

Nabil, over five days of no heat or electricity in below freezing temperatures, and going on six days now of no water, accomplished what the State of Texas, the city of Austin, and Northland Corporation, which owns our apartments, couldn’t or wouldn’t do. He inspired us to come together and provide whatever the others needed that we might have. Sometimes, that was simply letting each other know we cared for one another, and that we were still alive.

It was much like the fable of stone soup. A stranger tells a village who won’t give him food that he will make stone soup for them. As he heats a stone in a cauldron of water, one by one villagers begin adding vegetables and meat, until a stew is made to feed the entire village.

Photo of Nabil’s garage as supplies drop off point. Photo by Nabil Yazdani.

Nabil’s inspiration grew from checking on each other, to starting a couple of drop off points for necessities. Since we had originally had water, but no heat, he set up a camp stove in his garage for people to come heat water for coffee, or simple meals that only needed hot water added. Others dropped off and shared meals such as ramen noodles, Indian noodle dishes, Pho, couscous, soups and more. Anything that could be eaten with just added hot water.

Gayle and Dan, my neighbors downstairs who I already knew, have a grill, and made coffee for me in the mornings until the water cut off. They heated food to share with me and my neighbor Sarah, who hadn’t gotten groceries when this began. Eventually, before the power came on, Gayle and Dan loaned their grill to the entire group. Someone else donated propane, and one night Nabil grilled hamburgers, donated by a housebound neighbor, for whoever wanted one. He then took some to the crew from Pike Corporation who were attempting to restore our power.

Neighbors Fran and Nate Rice shared their fireplace with me and Sarah as a warming center. Nate, along with other neighbors, Pablo Martinez, Nabil, and David Burley, voluntarily kept the walkways and the driveway at our entrance clear of ice and snow. It was back breaking work, but they reported it kept them warm. Nabil and Michelle Powell cleared the ramp and pathway for a neighbor in a wheelchair.

Nate Rice and Pablo Martinez clearing the entryway. Photo by Nabil Yazdani/used with permission.

Michelle Powell salting the walkway for a neighbor in a wheelchair. Photo by Nabil Yazdani/used with permission.

Pablo went to the woods around our hiking trail and chopped wood for those few who had fireplaces. He doesn’t have one himself.

Then the water went out along with the electricity and heat. It’s still out as I write, more than six days later. That’s when the bucket brigade began. Neighbors in buildings close to the pool took water from the pool to flush their toilets. First world solution. Then they took turns bringing buckets of water to those of us in buildings further from the pool.

Pablo and I went on a water hunt, but couldn’t find any. We brought back teas, lemonade, ginger ale and juices to keep people hydrated. Others who had bottles of water brought them to Nabil’s garage to share, along with the food, LED lanterns, and other supplies available to whomever needed anything we had. Someone donated beer, another all types of bread.

Around the fourth day of no power, more and more people joined the phone tree, until Nabil, with the eventual help of two others, started a WhatsApp group. We kept the original text chain of 28 people, and added all others to WhatsApp, 71 people total, representing more households. A wealth of information, more supplies, and uplifting support followed.

There was some ranting, too, toward the owners of the apartments who were nearly non-responsive. The manager and another office person were phenomenal, although hampered by what they could do. They opened a warming center for us in a house located on the property normally used to staff training. It had a generator for lights and heat, but no water. On the day I went there to make coffee for anyone who wanted it for as long as the water we hauled there lasted, a corporate maintenance employee threw us out. That’s a story for another time, as it was the only negative in the entire time of positivity, communal aid, and inspirational reaching out from neighbor to neighbor.

We helped each other survive. Those who are housebound, and older people like me, had help from all sides in carrying heavy buckets of water, and having food and medicine delivered by our neighbors. I had offered my spare bedroom to a couple who had been locked out. They were able to get in, but the next day they brought me gallons of water to use to flush toilets.

There’s so much more to this story. I will be adding updates and writing more stories of what this coming together accomplished. We have many people from India in our complex, and before this, I had always felt that they stayed to themselves — even more so than we all did, in our modern, isolated way. But the couple who brought me water are from India, as are many in our WhatsApp group. We are now a connected community, not isolated individuals or separate segments.

Community and communication is continuing to this day, and we have all sworn it will continue after the water comes back on and we are no longer in crisis.

Our hero, Nabil Yazdani, posted a powerful Baháʼí saying to our WhatsApp group.

“Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye with one another with the utmost love and harmony, with friendliness and fellowship. He who is the Day Star of Truth beareth me witness! So powerful is the light of unity, that it can illuminate the whole earth.” — Bahá’u’lláh

From our community to yours, wherever you are, we hope you’ll follow our lead, even after we’re all safe and warm again.