As temperatures near triple digits, Houston residents remain without power following Hurricane Beryl, struggling to find relief and essential services.
As of Wednesday morning, nearly 1.7 million homes and businesses were still without electricity, a decrease from the peak of over 2.7 million reported on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Now, Texas is facing temperatures reaching into the high 90s, exacerbated by intense humidity.
The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory, describing the conditions as potentially dangerous.
With power outages and a lack of air conditioning, they warned about an increased risk of heat-related illnesses during these high temperatures.
As residents saw Hurricane Beryl make landfall early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, state officials faced scrutiny regarding the power utility’s preparations.
After the first 36 hours, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R-TX) announced that a sports and event complex would temporarily accommodate up to 250 hospital patients awaiting discharge, unable to be released to homes without power.
Patrick, who is acting as governor while Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is abroad, said nursing homes and assisted living centers were of utmost priority.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 16 hospitals were operating on generator power Tuesday morning.
Brad Tutunjian, vice president of regulatory policy at CenterPoint Energy, which serves a significant portion of the Houston area, supported the utility’s readiness and response efforts.
“From my perspective to have a storm pass at 3 p.m. in the afternoon, have those crews come in in the late evening, and have everything ready by 5 a.m. to go out and get out and start the workforce is rather impressive because we’re talking about thousands of crews,” Tutunjian said at a media briefing.
Beryl left at least seven dead in the United States, one in Louisiana and six in Texas, and at least 11 dead in the Caribbean.
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Nim Kidd, the head of the state’s division of emergency management, reassured that restoring power was the top priority.
Residents complained that city and state officials failed to alert them about a storm initially forecast to make landfall much farther down the coast, leaving insufficient time to secure gas or prepare to evacuate if power was lost.
