“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it, but we’re out of the woods now.”

That is what a Regina man who has been living in Fort Worth, Texas is saying about the extreme cold weather that hit the state last week.

Paul Giokas is familiar with cold weather having endured it in Saskatchewan, but he says he has never seen anything like what it was like.

While it is in the 60’s and 70’s now, in the 25 years I have been here and this is by far the hardest week I have ever gone through here.”Giokas said. “We get winter storms here about once a winter that shuts down the city but that lasts about a day or a day and a half. This was so much different though as with the windchill it got down to minus 25 degrees Celsius.   That’s insane for here.  It would be like Saskatchewan getting up to 50 degrees Celsius in the summer.”

While his family was able to huddle around a gas fireplace for warmth, he says it got to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in his home which was much better than it was for others.  He says people just a couple of blocks away from him still don’t have running water. In another case, a small child died from hypothermia in the basement of his home as it was 12 degrees Fahrenheit inside the house.

In all, 30 people have died as a result of the cold weather.

Giokas says to describe the last week, it has been a combination of either no water, no power, no heat or a combination of all.