A day after Tropical Storm Beryl dropped a deadly punch to Houston, flooding streets and highways and killing at least four people, Texas officials were struggling to restore power to millions of residents as warm weather returned to the region.
The storm, which made landfall in Texas as a Category 1 hurricane around 4 a.m. Monday, weakened as it passed the sprawling city and its suburbs. But the strength of its winds left Houston residents shaken for the second time in two months, following deadly storms that struck the city in May.
Numerous trees were downed in Houston, with two trees falling on homes, killing residents.
The storm packed 65 mph winds as it passed through Houston, but also produced hurricane-force winds of over 80 mph in and around the city. These gusts were enough to snap and knock down trees across the city.
There were two confirmed storm-related deaths on Monday, two of which occurred when trees fell on homes, pinning 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 the home with his family. The man was 53 years old, the Harris County sheriff said on social media. Another man was taken to a 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 near Interstate 45, north of downtown Houston.
The storm moved quickly, without stopping like Hurricane Harvey.
Beryl caused heavy rainfall in Houston. Floodwaters filled many of the city's drainage creeks to their banks and, in some cases, exceeded them. Elsewhere, parts of highways and underpasses were inundated. At least 47 people had to be rescued from the high waters, officials said.
A civilian employee of the Houston Police Department was killed when he drove into a flooded underpass near downtown, where his car submerged. (A fourth person died in a house fire in southeast Houston, which Houston Mayor John Whitmire said was “storm-related.”)
But the city's neighborhoods were spared widespread flooding. Unlike Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which devastated the city, Beryl moved relatively quickly over Houston, arriving in the early morning hours and leaving the city by the afternoon.
Though water levels remained high in many locations, they began receding in some locations on Monday and are expected to continue to do so on Tuesday.
Millions of people are left without power and don’t know when they will get electricity again.
As the storm moved through, the biggest problem for Houston residents became widespread power outages. The main provider, CenterPoint Energy, said Monday that more than 2 million customers were without power, and officials did not immediately give a timeline for when people could expect to have power back.
Nearly one in five electricity customers in Texas had lost power by noon Monday, with the worst outages in the Houston area.
“The vast majority of us are 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 power workers are ready to begin repairs as soon as they can do so safely, including 7,000 workers who came from outside the Houston area to help.
CenterPoint said in a statement that customers in the hardest-hit areas should prepare to be without power for long periods of time.
“This will be a multiday restoration effort,” said Thomas Gleason, chairman of the state Public Utilities Commission.
The damage in the United States was minimal compared to that in the Caribbean.
The hurricane's strength had diminished significantly from its peak in the Caribbean. Beryl formed in June and intensified into a Category 5 hurricane, the earliest ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.
The storm killed at least 11 people across several islands in the Caribbean, including Jamaica., and in Venezuela.
Carriacou and Petite Martinique, in Grenada, Beryl, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on July 1, destroyed about 98 percent of the buildings housing about 10,000 people, officials said.
The storm is weakening, but the possibility of tornadoes remains.
Beryl was moving out of Texas on a path that was forecast to cross into Louisiana and Arkansas, and then turn north.
The storm is weakening as it moves inland. But the potential for tornadoes remains. Forecasters issued tornado warnings for parts of eastern Texas and Louisiana on Monday.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a news conference that “multiple tornadoes” were reported in northeast Texas on Monday.
Judson Jones Contributed reporting.
