Former Hawaii residents living in Texas are thawing out from the extreme cold snap that caused widespread power and water outages in recent days.

Wool socks, thermal underwear and down jackets were keeping former Waimanalo resident Scott Nelson and his Hawaii-born sons, Seo, 9, and Es, 7, warm in Harlingen in southern Texas, where it was a relatively warm 58 degrees Saturday.

“It froze three nights and there was ice outside,” Nelson said. The city instituted rolling blackouts and his family ate canned food heated on a propane camp stove.

He recalled that the severe conditions caused panic buying among many residents. “That made people just freak out. It was worse than the beginning of the pandemic — people hoarding stuff,” Nelson said. Most gas stations were closed since they couldn’t operate without electricity. The few still open had lines “at least a mile long to get gas. It was insane.”

“Of course they say it had to with rolling blackouts, but they could have turned it on a lot sooner,” he said. “If it had gone on one more day, I’m sure people would start rioting.”

In Houston, where temperatures got down into the teens, Cara Yoder Matzen, 43, who grew up in Kaneohe, said she and her family fared pretty well thanks to a gas fireplace and her husband, who is from Maine.

“It was annoying not to shower all week, but that’s not too bad in the grand scheme,” she said Saturday.

“We dragged mattresses into the living room and slept,” huddled in front of the fireplace. Unlike their neighbors who dressed in ski clothes, Yoder Matzen and her family, including their sons, ages 9 and 7, managed with lightweight down jackets.

“We just put on layers and stayed under blankets,” she said.

In their neighborhood, the rolling blackouts left them without power for a day at a time. “It defeats the purpose,” she said. “It was supposed to take turns so nobody’s pipes would freeze. That did not avert all of the damage.”

Some neighbors and friends are now scrambling to repair burst pipes and collapsed ceilings, Yoder Matzen said. But her husband, Evan, 39, is “originally from Maine and thank goodness for that.” He knew when to let the faucets drip to prevent freezing and when to shut them off.

The family was able to get delivery of water jugs and bottles, which they shared with an older neighbor, and also opened their guest room to a co-worker and his dog when they still had heat and he had lost power.

“We try to take care of each other,” she said.

Lorna Aquino, 75, moved to Hawaii from Plano, Texas, in 2005, then returned to Texas in 2013 to care for her mother.

“This is the first time this really happened in all these years,” she said, although it previously snowed a few times.

Plano, located north of Dallas, got as cold as 5 degrees, with a wind-chill factor below zero and snow 3 to 4 inches deep, she said.

“The snow is not the problem. It’s the ice that’s really the problem … ,” Aquino said. “It turns warm during the day. It melts and the snow turns into ice. Then in the morning, there are snow flurries again. It covers the ice, so you don’t know. So you slip and slide to where you’re going.”

Aquino and her two sisters, also in their 70s, are retired, so they haven’t had to drive to work in the icy conditions and are well stocked with groceries. When the electricity went out for two days, “we were all bundled up in layers with blankets, especially my mother, who is 104 years old. She mostly stays in bed, so piles of blankets kept her warm. The first day (starting 3 a.m. Monday), we had 13 hours of no electricity.”

Aquino said her family normally keeps the house a toasty 78 degrees, but without heat, the temperature indoors was as cold as outside. “The gas water heater kept going, but the gas heat inside the house was gone.”

Fortunately, she said, there was no interruption in water service and they had hot water for tea and hot chocolate.