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Huge winter storms plungedlarge parts of the central andsouthern United States into an en-ergy crisis this week, with frigidblasts of Arctic weather cripplingelectric grids and leaving millionsof Americans without power amiddangerously cold temperatures.

The grid failures were most se-vere in Texas, where more thanfour million people woke up Tues-day morning to rolling blackouts.Separate regional grids in theSouthwest and Midwest alsofaced serious strain. As of Tues-day afternoon, at least 23 peoplenationwide had died in the stormor its aftermath.

Analysts have begun to identifykey factors behind the grid fail-ures in Texas. Record-breakingcold weather spurred residents tocrank up their electric heaters andpushed power demand beyondthe worst-case scenarios that gridoperators had planned for. At thesame time, a large fraction of thestate’s gas-fired power plantswere knocked offline amid icyconditions, with some plants suf-fering fuel shortages as naturalgas demand spiked. Many ofTexas’ wind turbines also frozeand stopped working.

The crisis sounded an alarm forpower systems throughout thecountry. Electric grids can be en-gineered to handle a wide range ofsevere conditions — as long asgrid operators can reliably predictthe dangers ahead. But as climatechange accelerates, many electricgrids will face extreme weatherevents that go far beyond the his-torical conditions those systemswere designed for, putting them atrisk of catastrophic failure.

While scientists are still analyz-ing what role human-caused cli-mate change may have played inthis week’s winter storms, it isclear that global warming poses abarrage of additional threats topower systems nationwide, in-cluding fiercer heat waves andwater shortages.

Measures that could help make

FRIGID ONSLAUGHTSTRETCHES LIMITSOF ELECTRIC GRIDS

SWATH OF U.S. IN ICEBOX

Climate Change Is Likelyto Make Catastrophic

Outages Common

By BRAD PLUMER

A deep freeze covered much of the central United States on Tuesday.Pages A14-15.

Bitter Cold, Stretching From Canada to the Rio Grande

TIM WALLACE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

0° 10° 30° 50° 70°F–10°

Lowest temperatures forecastSunday through Tuesday

Source: National Weather Service, Global Forecast System

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More than four million Texans were subject to rolling blackouts to ease strain on electric grids. In Houston, a church served as awarming center, and in Austin, Joel Zavala sought gas for his generator. Grids in the Southwest and Midwest also were stressed.

DAVID J. PHILLIP/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A15

TAMIR KALIFA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Shortly before Christmas, asOregon schools faced their 10thmonth under some of the nation’ssternest coronavirus restrictions,Gov. Kate Brown began a majorpush to reopen classrooms.

She relaxed certain standardsfor restarting in-person teaching.She offered to help districts payfor masks, testing and tracing,and improved ventilation. Mostimportant, she prioritized teach-ers and school staff members forvaccination — ahead of some old-er people.

Her goal: to resume in-personclasses statewide by Feb. 15.

But today, roughly 80 percent ofOregon’s 560,000 public school-children remain in fully remote in-struction. And while some dis-tricts are slowly bringing childrenback, two of the largest, Portlandand Beaverton, do not plan to re-open until at least April — andthen only for younger students.

Oregon’s halting efforts to re-turn children to classrooms arebeing repeated up and down theWest Coast. The region’s largestcity school districts — from Se-attle to Portland to San Franciscoto Los Angeles — have remainedmostly closed, even as large dis-tricts elsewhere, including Bos-ton, New York, Miami, Houstonand Chicago, have been resumingin-person instruction.

And the release on Friday ofguidelines from the Centers forDisease Control and Preventionthat urge school districts to re-open has not changed the minds ofpowerful teachers’ unions op-posed to returning students toclassrooms without more strin-

Despite a Push,Oregon SchoolsRemain Empty

By SHAWN HUBLER

Continued on Page A6

AFRIN, Syria — In a tentedcamp on a hilltop above the city ofAfrin, 300 Syrian families struggleto keep warm in the rain and mud.Displaced three times since theyfled their farms near Damascusseven years ago, they survive onslim handouts and send the chil-dren out to scavenge.

“The situation is very bad, raincomes into the tent,” said BushraSulaiman al-Hamdo, 65, lifting theground sheet to show the soddenearth where her bedridden hus-band lay. “There’s not enoughfood, there is no assistance organi-zation, no drinking water.”

President Recep Tayyip Erdo-gan of Turkey was widely criti-cized by the United Nations and

Western leaders three years agowhen he ordered Turkish troopsacross the Syrian border intoAfrin, an action seen as opportun-istic and destabilizing. Thousandsof Kurdish families fled the Turk-ish invasion, along with the Kurd-ish fighters. In their place camehundreds of thousands of Syriansfrom other areas, who haveswollen the population, takingover homes and camping on farm-ing land.

Another Turkish intervention in

2019, farther east in Syria, met stillmore opprobrium amid accusa-tions of human rights violationsunder Turkey’s watch.

But as an end to the decade-long Syrian civil war still con-founds the world, Turkey has be-come the only international forceon the ground protecting somefive million displaced and vulner-able civilians. Today, the Turkishsoldiers are all that stand betweenthem and potential slaughter atthe hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and those of hisRussian allies.

Turkish officials recently es-corted journalists on a rare visit toAfrin, a district of northwesternSyria, where Turkey has createdits own de facto safe zone alongthe border. The Turks were keen

A Safe Zone That Can’t Protect Against MiseryBy CARLOTTA GALL

Displaced Syrian refugees are struggling in a sprawling tent camp on a hill above the city of Afrin.IVOR PRICKETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Millions Under TurkishControl in Syria Have

No Alternative

Continued on Page A10

AUSTIN, Texas — Texans shiv-ered under blankets as their elec-tricity flickered off and tempera-tures inside their homes plum-meted. Some awoke on Tuesday tofind icicles had formed from drip-ping kitchen faucets. And in aHouston suburb, a woman and herthree grandchildren who had beenrelying on a fireplace for heatwere killed after the authoritiessaid a blaze engulfed their home.

As a winter storm forced thestate’s power grid to the brink ofcollapse, millions of residentswere submerged this week intodarkness, bitter cold and a senseof indignation over being stuck inuncomfortable and even danger-ous conditions. The strain re-vealed the vulnerabilities of a dis-tressed system and set off a politi-cal fight as lawmakers called forhearings and an inquiry into theElectric Reliability Council ofTexas, the operator managing theflow of electricity to more than 26

Texans Shiver,Casting Blame

As Power FailsThis article is by David Mont-

gomery, Rick Rojas, Ivan Penn andJames Dobbins.

Continued on Page A14

ROCKFORD, Mich. — WhenRepresentative Peter Meijervoted to impeach Donald J. Trumpin January, making him one of 10House Republicans who buckedtheir party, he bluntly acknowl-edged that “it may have been anact of political suicide.”

This month, during Mr. Meijer’sfirst town hall event since that im-peachment vote, some of his con-stituents made clear to the newlyelected congressman that theyshared his assessment — not thatMr. Trump had committed an im-peachable act by helping incite ariot at the Capitol, but that cross-ing him was an unforgivable sin.

“I went against people who toldme not to vote for you, and I’velost that belief,” said Cindy Witke,who lives in Mr. Meijer’s district,which is anchored by Grand Rap-ids and small communities likethis one in Western Michigan.

Nancy Eardley, who spoke next,urged Mr. Meijer to stop sayingthe election had not been stolen.She said he had “betrayed” his Re-

Michigan Torn,With the G.O.P.In Trump’s Grip

By ASTEAD W. HERNDON

Continued on Page A16

WASHINGTON — The previ-ous two presidents of the UnitedStates declared they wanted topull all American troops out of Af-ghanistan, and they both decidedin the end that they could not do it.

Now President Biden is facingthe same issue, with a deadlineless than three months away.

The Pentagon, uncertain whatthe new commander in chief willdo, is preparing variations on aplan to stay, a plan to leave and aplan to withdraw very, very slowly— a reflection of the debate nowswirling in the White House. Thecurrent deadline is May 1, in keep-ing with a much-violated peaceagreement that calls for the com-plete withdrawal of the remaining2,500 U.S. troops.

The deadline is a critical deci-sion point for Mr. Biden, and it willcome months before the 20th an-niversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter-rorist attacks that prompted theAmerican-led invasion of Afghani-stan to root out Al Qaeda.

Two decades later, the strategicgoals have shifted many times,from counterterrorism and de-mocratization to nation-building,and far more limited goals thatPresident Barack Obama’s admin-istration called “Afghan goodenough.” Mr. Biden — who arguedas vice president throughout Mr.Obama’s term for a minimal pres-ence — will have to decidewhether following his instincts toget out would run too high a risk ofa takeover of the country’s key cit-ies by the Taliban.

Mr. Biden, one senior aidenoted, started his long career inthe Senate just before the UnitedStates evacuated its personnelfrom Saigon, the capital of SouthVietnam; the image of helicoptersplucking Americans and a fewVietnamese from a roof was asearing symbol of a failed strat-egy. Mr. Biden is highly aware ofthe risks of something similartranspiring in Kabul, the Afghancapital, if all Western troops leave,and he has privately described thepossibility as haunting, aides said.

But the president also ques-tions whether the small remain-ing contingent of Americans canaccomplish anything after 20

Test for Biden:Can U.S. Exit

Afghanistan?

Peace Deal Calls for aDecision by May 1

This article is by Helene Cooper,Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger.

Continued on Page A8

The English National Opera joined witha London hospital to offer vocal lessonsto help patients recover. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Letting Virus Victims BreatheMaybe that diet could wait for anotherday. Melissa Clark has some mouthwa-tering recipes that go all out. PAGE D2

FOOD D1-8

Maximalist BrowniesCarmakers, government agencies andinvestors are pouring money into re-search in a global race to profit fromemission-free electric cars. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Betting Big on BatteriesEnrolling teenagers in clinical trials forvaccines is crucial, but they are tougherto keep in trials than adults. PAGE A4

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-6

A Key Link to Herd ImmunityDozens of actors have accused some ofthe nation’s best-known performers anddirectors of harassment. PAGE A11

INTERNATIONAL A7-11

Sex Abuse Cases Rock Greece

Microbakeries have popped up in apart-ment kitchens, meeting New York City’sdemand for cheer and calories. PAGE D1

Homebound Pastry ChefsBrazil cancels its most famous Carnival,which had endured in years of war,hyperinflation and despotism. PAGE A7

Virus Drowns Out Samba BeatA painter whose ancestor was an Afri-can king is examining how the pastshaped his own identity. PAGE C1

Drawing a Royal Picture

Starved of cash by the pandemic, citiesare using their own property as collat-eral to pay for benefits. PAGE B1

Novel Plans to Save Pensions

As Serena Williams gets closer to tyingthe record for Grand Slam singles titles,Naomi Osaka is in her way. PAGE B7

SPORTSWEDNESDAY B7-9

Starry Semifinal in AustraliaPresident Biden has made clear that heplans to try to capitalize on his experi-ence and relationships on Capitol Hill toget things done. PAGE A16

Leveraging Senate Ties

At least 30 law enforcement officers tookpart in the rally before the Capitol riot.Many are being investigated. PAGE A13

NATIONAL A12-17

The Officers in the Crowd

Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A18

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . . No. 58,972 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Today, mostly sunny, brisk, colder,high 32. Tonight, turning cloudy, low25. Tomorrow, cloudy, snow, sleetlater, difficult travel, cold, high 30.Weather map appears on Page B12.

$3.00