More than 4,000 temporarily paralyzed sea turtles have been pulled from the Texas waters in the state’s largest-ever cold stunning event. How many will ultimately be saved is unclear as continued widespread power outages and freezing temperatures limit the ability to reheat and treat them.

Arctic temperatures swept across the desert state this week, with some regions plummeting below zero. The dip took shallow water temperatures down with it, including Laguna Madre, a popular turtle habitat near San Padre Island. When the ocean dips below 55 degrees, turtles get “cold stunned” — their heart rate plummets and fins stop moving. The immobile turtle floats inert, sometimes drifting to land but vulnerable to boat strikes, predators and drowning.

“You could put a cold-stunned turtle in a half an inch of water and they’d drown,” Wendy Knight, the executive director of Sea Turtle, Inc, a sea turtle rescue organization on San Padre Island, tells The New York Times.

Locals and officials are working together to throw these endangered turtles a lifeline. More than 400 stunned turtles were found in Coastal Bend, while more than 3,500 turtles have been rescued near San Padre Island. Volunteers took to the seas in private vessels and the Texas Game Warden pulled in 141 turtles on Tuesday. Other residents scoured the beaches, driving comatose turtles in their own cars to Sea Turtle, Inc or the South Padre Island Convention Centre, which is being heated with generators and used as an overflow storage facility.

Texas Game Wardens assigned to Cameron county rescued 141 sea turtles from the frigid waters of the Brownsville Ship Channel and surrounding bays. The sea turtles were transported via the PV Murchison, operated by Sgt. Game Warden Duke and B/M Bowers-Vest. pic.twitter.com/LqFBrElTog

— Texas Game Warden (@TexasGameWarden) February 17, 2021

“It is a huge, huge community effort,” Gina McLellan, a 71-year-old longtime Sea Turtle, Inc volunteer, tells the Washington Post. “We very often don’t even think about the [cold’s] impact on animals, because we’re so worried about our own electricity and water. With this kind of event, it’s a classic display of humanity toward animals.”

“The number of cold stunned green sea turtles found along the South Texas coast has increased significantly in recent years,” according to the National Park Service, likely due to the increasingly frequent, long, and intense cold weather in the region, and a rising population of resident juvenile green turtles.

But just because the turtles are out of the water does not mean they are out of the woods.

Sea Turtle, Inc lost power on Sunday, leaving their warm water tanks unheated. “Right now, we have hundreds… of our resident turtles that are dry docked on the floors and inside of the facility,” says Knight, warming up thanks to a generator donated by SpaceX in the early hours of Wednesday morning. As the landed turtles reheat, it will be possible to determine which turtles survived and what injuries need to be addressed. But “the prolonged holdback of electricity has blown out all ten of our heaters...and they are no longer able to provide any heat” to the resident center’s warm water tanks, says Knight. Each heater will cost thousands of dollars to replace.

“That will be our next challenge to face,” she says.

Cold stunned turtles in Texas can be reported to 1-866-TURTLE-5 (1-866-887-8535), or 1 (361) 949-8173, ext. 226 in Upper Laguna Madre and Corpus Christi Bay. Sea Turtle, Inc accepts online donations.