Disabled Infrastructure, Disability Resilience: Lessons from Winter Storm Uri in Texas

In her new book, Disabled Power, Angela Frederick tells the stories of people with disabilities who endured the 2021 Texas power crisis, which forced millions of residents to endure a dayslong winter storm without heat or water. Frederick highlights how disabled people and those with chronic health conditions are uniquely harmed when critical infrastructure such as power and water systems fail. Frederick also emphasizes another meaning of the phrase “disabled power:” the individual and collective resilience and creativity Texans with disabilities exercised to survive. The implications of this disaster underscore our increased vulnerability to infrastructural failures as extreme weather events become more common.

Speaker Angela Frederick is Associate Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at El Paso. Her new book, Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster (NYU Press 2025) examines the impact of Winter Storm Uri and the 2021 Texas power crisis on people with disabilities.

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