Larry Nelson's unpowered AC unit sits in the window sill of his home in the Third Ward neighborhood on July 12 in Houston, Texas. Nelson, 71, had not had access to his oxygen tank because of power outages.
CNN —
Theodore Doyle, an 81-year-old retired manager with the former US Customs Service, was waking up in his hot and muggy northeast Houston apartment in a bed soaked in sweat.
Doyle ultimately checked into a $98-a-night hotel room late Tuesday, after enduring a compounding crisis of extreme heat and no power for more than a week with about 200 other seniors at an independent living facility in the Kingwood community.
“There’s no air circulating. It’s just stifling and it’s sort of tough to breathe,” he told CNN before returning to his apartment when power was restored Thursday afternoon. “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
During the outage, a generator powered one elevator and a large, air-conditioned lounge at the complex – a lifeline for many who are dependent on electric wheelchairs and scooters to get around and oxygen machines for pulmonary disease. At times, as many as 40 residents sought refuge in the lounge. Others remained in their stifling apartments. Some stayed with relatives.
“A friend just turned 95 about a month ago,” Doyle said. “Another friend of mine is over 90 and quite a few of us are all over 80. It’s tough. You’re not as spry as you used to be.”
Residents in the generator-powered lounge of an independent living facility in the Kingwood community in Texas. The space became a lifeline for many older residents during the long power outage.
By Saturday evening, about 1,900 customers of Houston’s main utility, CenterPoint Energy, were without power, according to PowerOutage.us. The number fluctuated throughout the day. It’s unclear if those customers have been without power since Beryl hit the Golf Coast July 8 as a hurricane, leaving more than 2 million customers in the dark, mostly in the Houston area. More than 135,000 CenterPoint customers had no power on Monday night.
The embattled utility said in a statement that customers without power were “predominantly isolated instances,” where homes or equipment sustained severe damage from the storm. CenterPoint, which has 2.8 million customers in the Houston area, said some current outages could be related to thunderstorms Saturday morning. “For safety reasons, our crews pause their work when there is lightning,” the statement said.
At least 14 Houston-area deaths were confirmed to be hurricane-related, including seven people – ranging in age from 50 to 110 – who died from “heat exposure due to power loss,” according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Overall, more than 20 deaths in Harris and nearby counties were attributed to the storm, according to the Houston Chronicle and other local media outlets. Older people were especially vulnerable and, authorities warned, the number of fatalities could grow.
For more than a week, some residents of the nation’s fourth largest city were left to sleep in their cars, shuffle perilously with canes and walkers across dark rooms and corridors, and watch food and medications spoil and critical medical equipment become inoperable. At times, they cried in desperation after discovering the bodies of neighbors who succumbed to the heat following a comparatively mild Category 1 hurricane.
“It is unimaginable this is happening in 2024,” Denise Furlough, who delivered food, batteries and ice to her 86-year-old father during the more than a week without power in his Alameda Plaza home, told CNN Saturday. “I was just frightened I might go over there and he wouldn’t be alive.”
‘She didn’t have to die’
In Houston’s Museum District on Tuesday, Pat Baker arrived at a condo complex to check on a neighbor with health problems who rented out her daughter’s apartment. The neighbor didn’t answer.
“I unlocked the door and found her,” Baker, fighting back tears, told CNN affiliate KHOU. “You know, it’s just been hot and miserable and I’m just sick of this. I’m just sick of it.”
Power was restored at the condo complex later that afternoon after the body was removed from the apartment, the station reported.
The latest name on the Harris County list of confirmed Beryl-related deaths was Christine Davis, who had turned 110 in May, according to the 110 Club, a site about super-centenarians. She died Tuesday at Memorial Hermann Hospital Northeast from hyperthermia caused by “environmental heat exposure due to power outage,” according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Another confirmed storm victim was Pamela Jarrett, 64, who died of hyperthermia on July 11, days after the hurricane, in her home in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston. Relatives told CNN affiliate KTRK on Wednesday that Jarrett relied on a wheelchair and feeding tube.
“It could have been avoided, and she didn’t have to die,” said her sister Janet, who took care of her and struggled to keep the feeding device charged during the outage. She said she tried to keep Jarrett cool with ice and water until she became unresponsive.
“As much as I tried to save her,” Janet Jarrett told the station, “I couldn’t save her.”
Power was restored in the Jarrett home on Tuesday.
Utility pledges ‘thorough review’
In the city of Humble, about 20 miles north of Houston, Christina Bourgeois, her three children – ages 5 through 9 – and their dog Mimosa spent the night after the storm in her Dodge Journey outside their home. She kept the Dodge on, the air conditioner running because of the heat.
“I slept in the driver’s seat,” she told CNN Friday. “It was awful. You know, my younger son, I had to get up and take him inside to use the restroom.”
The children later stayed with relatives and Bourgeois, 32, spent every night in the car until power was restored on Wednesday.
“I would wake up every two or three hours or so to turn the air on and then turn it off,” she said of the nights she spent alone in the Dodge.
“I hadn’t slept. I was exhausted. I was starting to swell. I had bags under my eyes. Any little noise would wake me up because I have the windows down, you know … Any kind of rustle of the leaves or, you know, even cars passing by, I would just wake up.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last Sunday threatened executive action if CenterPoint Energy did not address concerns over the prolonged outage. And the Public Utilities Commission of Texas said it would investigate the company’s response, according to Chairman Thomas Gleason. He told reporters Monday the utility’s ability to maintain its infrastructure and its communication with customers has been called into question.
CenterPoint Energy told CNN in a statement it was “committed to doing a thorough review of our Hurricane Beryl response.”
“We are engaging with community leaders, elected officials, local clergy leadership and others across the area to learn about how we can be more responsive to their needs and concerns,” the statement said.
Doyle, before he returned to his apartment on Thursday, said he had about $150 worth of food on his refrigerator that went bad. He said he was unsure about the condition of some insulin he had left behind. He blamed the utility company for leaving thousands of Houstonians marooned in a broiling nightmare.
“You have no idea how frustrating this is,” he said. “We should not be subjected to this.”
Furlough, whose father, Julius Gordon, is a cancer survivor and has heart disease, said he – like many Houston residents – felt hopeless and abandoned until power to his home was restored on Tuesday.
Her father told CNN, “You’re just there. You just vegetate.”
CNN’s Amy Simonson and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.
