text: On Saturday, the White House announced that President Joe Biden had signed a major disaster relief declaration that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had requested. The move will provide broad federal aid to the storm-stricken state as authorities pivot to recovery efforts. Biden approved public assistance for all 254 counties in the state, but individual assistance will only be available in 77 counties, including Dallas County.
  Biden said he is still considering the possibility of visiting Texas next week. “I don’t want to be a burden,” he told reporters. “When the president lands in a city in America, it has a long tail.”
  Earlier in the day Friday, less than 200,000 people were still experiencing power outages, down from the millions who were stuck in the dark earlier in the week. But as North Texas thawed out, other problems began to emerge, including busted pipes and water boil orders affecting millions of residents statewide.
  Worse still, of the 47 storm-related deaths nationwide, at least 30 happened in Texas, according to data by the Washington Post. Some died of carbon monoxide poisoning, some in car accidents caused by icy roads and others from exposure.
  Tallying the damage will take a long time, but some have already predicted the storm will prove one of the costliest in the state’s history.
  “We are used to our storms here in Texas with tornadoes, hurricanes and hail,” Camille Garcia, communications director with the Insurance Council of Texas, told Dallas Morning News on Thursday. “But those are regional. We are talking about an event that reached every part of Texas.”
  Garcia said the storm could end up costing Texans more than Hurricane Harvey, which tallied more than $19 billion in insurance claims.
  On Friday, the Texas Democratic Party shared a list of resources for those grappling with the storm's financial fallout. "No one should be going through this," the party said in a press release. "It is an outrage that our state’s leadership has failed us this way."
  As of Friday, Garland City Council member Deborah Morris has already spoken to residents of nine different apartment complexes that "had major pipes freeze and break."
  "The fact is when it's freezing weather and there are no plumbers to be had, they're stuck no matter how much they wish to fix it," she told the Observer.
  Because the apartment complexes had to shut off their whole water supply while the pipes were being repaired, Morris and the city helped organize a water drive for locals. Several churches volunteered to deliver pallets of water to apartment complexes and residences around the city.