A day after Tropical Storm Beryl hit Houston with deadly force, flooding roads and highways and killing at least four people, officials in Texas are struggling to restore power to millions of residents as hot weather returns to the region.
The storm, which made landfall in Texas as a Category 1 storm around 4 a.m. Monday, weakened as it passed over the sprawling city and its suburbs. But its winds still stunned Houstonians for the second time in two months after a deadly storm system hit the city in May.
Houston lost many trees, including two that fell on homes and killed people.
The storm had sustained winds of 65 mph as it passed over Houston, but also produced hurricane-force winds of over 80 mph in and around the city. That was enough to rip branches off trees and topple them across the city.
Two of the confirmed deaths from Monday’s storm involved trees falling on homes, crushing people inside.
In one case, a tree fell on a home in the Atascocita area northeast of the city, killing a man who was inside with his family. He was 53 years old, the Harris County sheriff said on social media. Another person was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the local fire department.
The second person killed by a falling tree was a 74-year-old woman who was in her home north of downtown Houston, near Interstate 45.
The storm moved quickly, not slowing down like Hurricane Harvey.
Beryl brought heavy rain to Houston. Floodwaters pushed many of the city’s storm drains up to their banks and, in some cases, overtopped them. Elsewhere, sections of highways and tunnels were flooded. Officials said at least 47 people had to be rescued from high water.
A Houston Police Department civilian employee died when he drove into a flooded tunnel near downtown, where his car became submerged. (A fourth person died in a house fire in southeast Houston that Houston Mayor John Whitmire said was “storm-related.”)
But the city was spared widespread residential flooding. Unlike Hurricane Harvey, which devastated the city in 2017, Beryl moved relatively quickly through Houston, arriving early in the morning and leaving the city by afternoon.
While water levels remained high in many places, some began to recede on Monday and were expected to continue on Tuesday.
Millions of people are without power and do not know when it will be restored.
The biggest issue for Houston residents after the storm passed was widespread power outages. The main provider, CenterPoint Energy, said Monday that more than two million customers were without power, and officials did not immediately provide a timeline for when people could expect power to be restored.
About one in five electricity customers in Texas were without power by midday Monday, with the majority of the outages occurring in the Houston area.
“We are largely without power,” Lina Hidalgo, Harris County Judge and the county’s top elected official, said at a news conference Monday afternoon. She said about 10,000 electrical workers were ready to begin repairs as soon as they could safely do so, including 7,000 workers coming from outside the Houston area to help.
CenterPoint said in a statement that customers in the hardest-hit areas should prepare for extended power outages.
“This will be a multi-day restoration effort,” said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the state Public Utilities Commission.
The damage in the United States was negligible compared to what happened in the Caribbean.
The storm has weakened significantly since its peak in the Caribbean. Beryl formed in June and grew into a Category 5 hurricane, the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.
The storm has killed at least 11 people across the Caribbean islands, including Jamaica., and in Venezuela.
In Carriacou and Petite Martinique, Grenada, Beryl destroyed about 98 percent of the buildings, home to about 10,000 people, when it hit as a Category 4 storm on July 1, officials said.
The storm is weakening, but tornadoes are still possible.
Hurricane Beryl is moving out of Texas on a path that is forecast to continue into Louisiana and Arkansas, then further north.
As the storm moves inland, it continues to weaken. But tornadoes are still a possibility. Forecasters issued tornado warnings for parts of East Texas and Louisiana on Monday.
There were “several tornadoes” reported in northeast Texas on Monday, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said at a news conference.
Judson Jones Contribute report.
