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New Day

Millions in Texas Struggle for Drinking Water after Winter Storm; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) Says He Regrets Going to Cancun While Texans Suffer; Texas Mother Loses Home in Fire and Her Husband to Coronavirus. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 19, 2021 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: This is New Day. John Berman is off today. Jim Sciutto joins me. Great to have you.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEW DAY: Always good to be with you.

CAMEROTA: Another very busy morning because the crisis in Texas continues. So this morning, many begin to get their power but they are still in the midst of a massive water crisis. Millions of Texans do not have safe drinking water. Nearly half of the state has been ordered to boil water before drinking it, some having to go to extreme measures like boiling snow. Many are still dealing with these burst pipes and major damage to their homes.

Overnight, a huge fire broke out at this San Antonio apartment building shortly after the water was turned off there. Firefighters had to bring in water as the hydrants around there were frozen.

This water crisis also putting a major strain on hospitals, some hospitals having to move critically ill patients to other facilities, others hauling in water just to flush the toilets.

So, last night, President Biden spoke with the Texas governor and he's now ordering FEMA to send federal supplies and resources to the state.

SCIUTTO: Yes, they need it there.

As Texans suffer, Senator Ted Cruz, he is back in the state and doing some real damage control, or trying too, after flying to Cancun with his family for a vacation while the people of his state were suffering. Overnight, The New York Times published text messages from Cruz's wife showing that the senator, in fact, lied about the reason for his trip, more than once.

Last night, some of Cruz's constituents protested outside his home, calling for him to resign.

We begin though with CNN's Natasha Chen live in Houston. Progress on power, but still a water shortage there.

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim. Water is the issue. There are parts of town where water has come back, including this building, a furniture store, just started getting water back, but it's a trickle right now.

And this is a place that's been opening its doors to hundreds of people each night to have a warm place to sleep. And we can tell that the situation is improving, because after several hundred people each night, the last three nights, right now, there are only fewer than 100 people here, as people's homes, as more and more of them come back online.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHEN (voice over): No power, heat, or water.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've got flashlights, we can't reach (INAUDIBLE) the batteries. There's no propane in the area to be found.

CHEN: Food supplies running low.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's all about survival right now until it starts getting warm.

CHEN: And homes destroyed.

QIANA ABRAMS, TEXAS STORM VICTIM: It's like complete shock. It's like one of your worst nightmares.

CHEN: Hundreds of thousands of Texans are waking to a harsh reality this morning.

THOMAS BLACK, TEXAS STORM VICTIM: As of now, we're managing. But the gravity of the situation becomes more apparent by the minute.

CHEN: In Houston, people are waiting in line to fill up buckets of water from a spigot in a park to take home, while others here stay warm within this furniture store, which offered residents a place to eat and sleep.

About 137 million Texans are under a boil water advisory, and nearly 200 households are still in the dark. And it could take days for all to get power back.

JUDGE LINA HIDALGO, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS: We need to figure out what went wrong in the way that the Texas energy grid is run, but right now, there's still a lot of work to do in response and in recovery.

CHEN: Texas Governor Greg Abbott promised to reform and investigate the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which is in charge of 90 percent of the state's power grid.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): I'm taking responsibility for the current status of ERCOT. Again, I find what has happened unacceptable.

CHEN: With dangerously cold temperatures still in the region, frustration here is growing. Firefighters need to truck their own water to this blaze at a San Antonio apartment complex since the hydrants there were frozen. The conditions delayed the delivery of coronavirus vaccines in Texas and other hard-hit states.

ANDY SLAVITT, SENIOR ADVISER TO WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE TEAM: We can't have people getting on the roads and going into work and boxing them and delivering them through UPS or FedEx, either to sites like in Texas where they're not open yet. We're going to keep these vaccines safe and sound and then we can get them out to people and catch up as soon as the weather allows.

CHEN: A group of protesters welcomed Texas Senator Ted Cruz home returning back to Houston after facing backlash for leaving the crisis for a family vacation in Cancun. Cruz confirmed the trip after photos emerged on social media Wednesday showing the senator boarding a plane.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): The plan had been to stay through the weekend with the family. That was the plan.

Look, it was obviously a mistake. I mean, in hindsight, I wouldn't have done it.

CHEN: Some local leaders slammed Cruz.

MAYOR SYLVESTER TURNER (D-HOUSTON, TX): Certainly much more (INAUDIBLE) where he's going. Let me just put it -- just put it like that.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): I mean, I think he threw in the towel on Texas. This is a situation where it's all hand on deck.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHEN (on camera): The person who owns this furniture chain is known to locals as Mattress Mack. He began opening his doors for people to stay in here during Hurricane Katrina.

[07:05:00]

He did it again during Hurricane Harvey.

And he said while there were huge challenges during those events, this week's weather has been completely new to people in Houston. This is a warm weather town, definitely folks not used to those freezing temperatures. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Yes, I got to speak to him earlier this week. It's a great story, so generous. Natasha Chen, good to have you there. Thank you.

Joining me is Dr. Mark Boom. He is the president and CEO of Houston Methodist. He's in charge of seven hospitals in the Houston area, two of them still experiencing water shortages. Doctor, good to have you on this morning.

DR. MARK BOOM, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HOUSTON METHODIST: Good morning.

SCIUTTO: You were lucky that your facilities didn't lose power, but you had water shortages for a good period of time. I just wonder, how do you it? How do you run hospitals without water?

BOOM: Yes, it's a challenge, no question. We take a lot of things for granted, and one water is one of those (INAUDIBLE) that's really hard to be without. We had two hospitals completely without water, one for 48 hours, the other for 72 hours. Really, we can truck in bottled water. In fact, we supply and get ready for bottled water. So the potability issue for being able to drink is straightforward. But flushing toilets, obviously using water for many other reasons, pretty tough.

So, we'll truck in 6,000 gallon tankers. One of our hospitals got creative, when it rained the day after the ice, the first day, then the next day, it was raining. During the day, they actually collected rainwater and used that to flush toilets. We've trucked water from one hospital to another.

So we get creative. We fill up some of the reserve tanks we have, but it is definitely a challenge for everybody.

SCIUTTO: Lord, it's 2021. You're collecting rainwater, right, and you've got people in the Dallas area boiling snow to have water to drink for them and their kids. I mean, this is an enormous failure in the state of Texas.

As you're looking at this, you've got to run seven hospitals to keep people healthy and alive. What needs to be done to prevent this kind of thing from happening again?

BOOM: Yes, it's frustrating, obviously, and everybody is frustrated and I don't think anybody of us really understand exactly what happened yet. So, first thing, like with any disaster, internally, we always go back and do what's called a root cause analysis and we look at all the things that could have gone better and how we fix them. We need to do that obviously at a statewide level and an energy grid level and figure out what the problems are and hardwire the fixes.

I'm just glad that we were able to respond, that we're able manage through these. We've, unfortunately, had lots of experiences during disasters, whether Hurricane Ike or Hurricane Harvey three years ago. We see some of the same things this time. Water has been a problem a couple of times around. When power goes out, the pumping of water is an issue.

So we had water issues during Harvey as well. We see dialysis patients in the community who lose the place they normally go to for dialysis. And the hospitals become a backstop and really have to create kind of almost mass units in our hospitals to care for patients with dialysis. These are all issues that need to be addressed and understood.

SCIUTTO: You've described this as a dialysis crisis. The number of Americans who suffer with kidney issues, diabetes, et cetera, that's a remarkable term to hear. Can you handle that?

BOOM: Yes, it is. Unfortunately, most dialysis now happens -- most of it through a couple of big chains nationally who have a lot of small sites that patients go to. And they're not on generators. They have water issues. They don't have water storage issues. So wherever the things go down, like in Harvey, like now, the hospitals become their backstop because we're large, we're sophisticated, we have all those backup systems.

But during a disaster like this, we see tons of people surging into our emergency rooms outside of dialysis. So we're already busier than anything. And, of course, dealing with our own crises, and then we get all of these dialysis patients.

Of course, our duty and obligation, it's a sacred duty, frankly, to take care of these individuals, we'll do that. But every one of our hospitals has been overwhelmed by dialysis patients. Everyone takes conference rooms, creates triage centers and then creates areas within the hospital that normally wouldn't be a dialysis center as a dialysis center.

So at our main hospital, we took the massive conference room, you'll see 15 people in there being triaged at any given time, going on upstairs to about 15 to 20 different dialysis patients and an old ICU that's been closed and the only time it's been open was actually in the midst of the surge for COVID.

So it's a frustrating problem. We need to get some regulations in place to fix those issues.

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, credit to you, your staff, doctors, for making due, right, in the midst of it. You're also in the midst of a continuing COVID crisis, as many hospitals are. The country is. One- fifth of your patients are COVID patients. And now we have real vaccine delivery issues as a result of this storm and just not being able to get them out.

We had a doctor on last hour, Peter Hotez, who, of course, is in Texas as well, he says it's about a week that we've been setback. I mean, that amounts to tens of millions of doses of vaccine. I mean, how long before you can get back to getting people vaccinated?

BOOM: Well, actually, in our system, we've managed to already start that. On Monday, we helped out actually a county when they had a freezer failure and we scrambled and gave a thousand doses of their vaccine that needed to be used within hours.

[07:10:03]

But as of yesterday, we started vaccines back at all of our hospitals. Actually, one of the hospitals that was without water yesterday, I went a tour there, they were doing 1,500 vaccines yesterday and were able to do that in a large space that we have. And, really, you're using hand gel anyway for all of your hygiene issues, so very safely able to do that. So we're back on track.

So, for us, we lost about two days, but we'll catch up in the next two to three days. We've done 210,000 vaccines already across our system throughout this pandemic and we'll do probably 25,000-plus this week. It will be a little slower than usual, but we'll catch up. SCIUTTO: Well, more power to you. That's good to hear. That's good to hear you're able to turn that around. Dr. Mark Bloom, we wish you, we wish all the patients under your care the best of luck.

BOOM: Thank you so much.

SCIUTTO: Well, Senator Ted Cruz facing a backlash for flying to Cancun while millions of Texas residents were freezing. We're going to tell you about his hypocrisy, what he said about politicians in the past who have done this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

CAMEROTA: This is a handful of Senator Ted Cruz's constituents, excuse me, outside of his home on Thursday calling on him to resign. This is after Ted Cruz decided to go on to a tropical vacation with his family to Cancun, Mexico, in order to escape the bitter cold of Texas while millions of his constituents were left without heat, electricity and water.

He then, when he got busted, could not get his story straight about it.

Joining us now to talk about this and so much more, we have CNN Senior Political Reporter Nia-Malika Henderson and CNN Global Affairs Analyst Susan Glasser. She's a Staff Writer for The New Yorker.

Nia-Malika, there's so -- I mean, obviously, there's a lot that's comical about this, and there's a lot that's just horrible about it. I mean, the double standard, the hypocrisy, the sanctimony coming from Ted Cruz. Just two months ago, Ted Cruz didn't like it when a different elected official in Texas went on vacation.

Here is what he said. Hypocrites, complete and utter hypocrites, don't forget Mayor Adler who took a private jet with eight people to Cabo, and while in Cabo, recorded a video tell Austinites to stay home if you can, this is not the time to relax.

He was outraged two months ago about a mayor who went on vacation and then he hightailed it to a different country out of his state when Texans were in the most devastating situation in recent memory.

And, you know, I don't even know where to begin he's a public servant. But I don't think he likes the public service part of his job.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Right, that's right, I mean, the service part, right? The fact that he couldn't imagine that there was anything that he could do for his constituents on the ground in Texas, he couldn't call his donors to help, he couldn't physically help himself. That is what is so shocking and appalling.

But I do think it gets to what Ted Cruz thinks his role is. It's more, you know, to own the libs, to go on Fox News, to be a kind of Twitter troll. So in their time of need, he essentially failed his constituents because he couldn't think of the -- of any way that he could use his power to assist people in one of the most catastrophic sort of man-made disasters that those Texas folks have seen in many, many years.

SCIUTTO: Susan Glasser, I mean, beyond Ted Cruz, right, this crisis has pierced the bubble, right, of a lot of kind of political myths, has it not? Like Texas independence, right? The grid by itself didn't work by itself.

Right now, are the Texas secessionists going to turn down federal aid to show their principle, right? You know, are they going to -- is the Texas attorney general, who voted or attempted to overturn the election, going to turn down President Biden's, you know, emergency declaration? No, because they need the help, right?

I just wonder, does that have political consequences to show that so much of this stuff is just B.S.?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I think you're really right to point it out. This is the reason -- this is politics 101, the reason that Ted Cruz and the others resonate so much with people is because politics in the end has been lost sight of, it's about actually helping people. It's about working in the public interest.

And, you know, the Green New Deal doesn't exist, and yet somehow the governor of Texas thought he could blame that for the reason for Texas' catastrophic energy grid failure.

And I think it's an example of where our politics has gone off the rails. Ted Cruz, who is now in trouble for vacationing in Cancun while Texas freezes, what was the last thing he was in the public eye for? He was the one who was sponsoring the attack on the Electoral College that triggered the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.

That is not the kind of public service interest that presumably most people in Texas, Republican or Democrats, sent him to Washington for. And I think it just -- it's really painful when you see the consequences of politics not working. And, frankly, that's a lot of the story of 2022, isn't it? It's the story of the coronavirus and the federal government's seeming indifference to it? I mean, really, it's a painful time, because America's crisis is a crisis of our politics, not (INAUDIBLE) for people.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, taxpayers pay his salary, may we just remind everyone. But he couldn't hightail it away from them fast enough when crisis struck. Now, interestingly, he, in a campaign ad, talks about how wonderful he would be in a crisis. This was him after Hurricane Harvey. Here is his campaign ad.

[07:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When disaster truck, Texans came together helping each other, everyone doing their part, like Ted Cruz, who brought home billions in disaster relief and passed emergency tax relief for those hit by Hurricane Harvey.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No official, state, or federal has been more involved in the recovery of Galveston County than Senator Ted Cruz.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When the hurricane hit, you stood up for Texas, and Ted Cruz stood up for you.

CRUZ: I'm Ted Cruz and I approve this message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Unless it's cold out.

HENDERSON: Right, exactly. And my daughters want to go to Cancun, apparently. Listen, you can imagine the kind of attack ads that he is going to face when he runs for re-election in 2024, maybe he runs for re-election, maybe he runs for president. But, listen, this ultimately may not actually affect his political prospects in Texas. Perhaps they affect it nationally, but we are at a time where sort of identity for many people is much more important than acts of service. What you do for constituencies is much less important than whether or not you are, you know, wearing the jersey that they want you to wear.

So, you know, and that's in some ways what Ted Cruz probably suspects, that he can kind of get away with something like this, throw his daughters under the bus and make an appearance on Fox News and all will be well. You had hosts on Fox News and conservatives defending Ted Cruz saying, oh, well, what could Ted Cruz actually do in this situation? He's only a senator from Texas. So he knows that reality. And so in that way, he probably didn't really care much, you know, fleeing his constituents.

SCIUTTO: Yes, he probably also does the math and says he's got four years before he's got to be re-elected and hope that people forget by next week, right?

CAMEROTA: And they may. I mean, they may given what has happened after the Capitol insurrection.

SCIUTTO: All right. So there's a big foreign policy speech today from President Biden, Susan Glasser. And he is turning the page on a whole host of Trump America First stuff, right, you know, reaffirming America's commitment to NATO, Trump apparently questioned that, beat him up for money, et cetera, but also the Iran deal. And this particularly, Susan Glasser, important, because he has said, and he will now say publicly, they're willing to open talks again on the nuclear deal that Trump pulled out of. Is there a path to resurrecting this?

GLASSER: Well, you know, it's interesting that this is once again sort of shot right to the front of the foreign policy pile. And yesterday, the Biden administration announced that they were, in fact, willing to proceed back to talks with Iran. Interestingly enough, there's still a little bit of a you go first, no, you go first dance going on here. Iran says that you have to lift the sanctions that the Trump administration re-imposed before we would consider returning to the terms of the deal. The U.S. position is, no, you must return to compliance and then we can talk.

I think, you know, behind the scenes, there's a lot of discussion inside the new Biden administration about just exactly what might be possible to break what seems like an impasse. But right now, I think the key thing is you see Biden joining hands again with European allies, like Germany, France and Britain, that are partners in the Iran deal, and saying, we are going to sponsor together this effort to get the U.S. and the Iran talking to each other once again.

Remember that the Trump administration essentially unilaterally walked out on the deal and walked out on our allies as well. So I think that's one key thing you're seeing from Biden. This is going to be his first appearance, as you said, as the G7, as well, a group of people who were very uncomfortable in the latter days of the Trump administration.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, we only have a little time left. When are we going to see the COVID relief money? When are Americans going to get those direct checks? When are schools going to get the money? When is this going to happen?

HENDERSON: Yes, this is the big question. Mid-March, maybe? I think that is the target for the Biden administration. They want to get this done quickly. They obviously know there's a lot of suffering going on across the country. So I imagine sometime in mid-March, because that's when you you'll see a lot of the money that's already gone out there drying up for people.

So I think that is the target date. And we'll see if they're able to cobble together those 51 senators or 50 and then the vice president to get this done.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, Susan, thank you both very much.

HENDERSON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So this morning, millions of Texans are still struggling from that deadly winter storm. We'll speak with one mother who has truly lost everything while trying to keep her children warm.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

CAMEROTA: This week's devastating winter storm in Texas hit one family particularly hard. Stephanie Rubio lost her husband, Robert, to coronavirus just three weeks ago, then this week, as she desperately tried to keep her children warm when the heat and power went out in their town, she lit a fire in her fireplace and it ended up burning her house down. Joining us now is Stephanie Rubio along with her sons, Levi and Blake, and her daughter, Allison. Stephanie, thank you. We're so sorry to all of you for your loss. We're so sorry about the loss of your husband, Robert, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE RUBIO, HOME BURNED DOWN IN TEXAS WINTER STORM: Thank you. I appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: I mean, this is just, obviously devastation piled on devastation. What happened on Tuesday before the fire?

RUBIO: My two children, Allison and Blake, were home, sitting by the fire and Allison actually took a nap and Blake was on his phone, that's all he had. And so me and Levi had gone to town to go get some more firewood. And before we knew it, Levi is getting a phone call saying, mom, our house is on fire.

[07:30:02]

So we're in a very small community and so we rush up there to our home.