ODESSA, Texas — Odessa residents woke up bright and early this morning to get to stores, hoping to stock up on the water they desperately need.
Many of them, like Sade Baston, woke up to the news of no water in the city. She heard about the outage from her friend, Lena Evans, who came to the store with her.
"I didn’t know, but thank God she knew, because I didn’t know, but I found out this morning when I went to my kitchen to make me some hot tea," said Baston. "I thought the water just went out."
When Evans learned about the outage, she knew they would need water for the kids in their families.
"I said 'okay we don’t have water,'" Evans said. "So I went to get her and made sure she was ok, and I said 'come on, let’s go get some water because we don’t know when it’ll be fixed.' She has kids and I have grandkids, so we came together to get water."
Both ladies got there as soon as they could.
"I thought we better get out and get ours before it hit and everybody was gonna be panicking," said Evans.
Most people at the store, like them, had water in their carts.
"Nobody is really grabbing groceries, they’re mostly grabbing water," said Baston. "We counted about 15 baskets, they all had water."
They need water for everything, not just drinking. Cooking, cleaning and hygiene are all thrown into chaos from the outage.
"Since this happened, you have to tell your children 'hey you have to slow down. We have to put this behind the toilet to flush the toilet to make things work to make dish water.' With kids you have to tell them what’s going on so they won’t waste the water," said Baston.
One neighbor, grateful for the other in this time of need.
"I thank God for you," Baston said to Evans.
"You welcome baby," Evans said to Baston. "We have to look out for each other."