Some Rich Dallas Areas Affected Less By Power Outages
The Claim
Highland Park and Preston Hollow, rich areas of Dallas, have not experienced power outages like other parts of the city.
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Emerging story
A massive winter storm in Texas began over the weekend of February 14, 2021, leading to widespread power outages throughout the state. On Twitter, a claim has been spreading that “rich enclaves” of Dallas, specifically Highland Park and Preston Hollow have not experienced power outages “while other parts of the city have remained without power for the entire day.”
A map of power outages in Dallas provided by electric company Oncor is also circulating social media, appearing to show no outages in the Highland Park or Preston Hollow areas.
Some users reacted to this by attributing the inequality to American capitalism.
One Twitter user found this to be untrue, claiming their “family who lives [in Highland Park] is out of power."
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation found this claim to be selective since Highland Park has been affected less than most areas of Texas.
According to DataUSA, Highland Park has a median household income of $207,019, with a poverty rate of 2.72%, while the city of Dallas has a median household income of $52,210 and a poverty rate of 20.5%. This shows a clear wealth gap between residents of Highland Park and the rest of the Dallas area. Data was not available for Preston Hollow.
If you visit the Oncor power outage map, it appears that only 4 outages have been reported in the area.
However, if you look past the visuals, you can find the actual data. The Oncor outage map allows you to sort the data by zip code. On the map shared around social media, the zip code of the Highland Park area shown is 75205. The data shows that this zip code is has experienced 250 outages while serving 11,793 customers (2% affected). The total amount of Oncor customers affected throughout Texas is 605,314 while the total number of customers served is 3,770,887 (16% affected). When we look at Preston Hollow’s main zip code 75220, the data shows 2,781 outages for 15,791 total customers (16% affected). This data shows that there are in fact still outages in the richer areas like Highland Park and Preston Hollow. In fact, 16% of Preston Hollow customers are experiencing outages, the exact same rate as Oncor’s full customer base. However, Highland Park does seem to be suffering less from these outages with a much lower rate of 2% of its residents affected.
During a live interview Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Greg Abbott called for more transparency and more answers from the state's utility leaders.
