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The situation in Texas after Hurricane Beryl is becoming worse and worse, as heat is scorching the area amidst an ongoing power outage.
Beryl made landfall on July 8 as a Category 1 hurricane with winds of around 80 mph, killing 11 people across Texas and Louisiana, and wiped out power to over 2.7 million people. Since then, power has been restored to over half of that number, but over 1.3 million people still have absolutely no electricity at all.
As temperatures heat up to over 90˚F (32.2˚C), with an Extreme UV Index and a Heat Index of over 100˚F (37.7˚C), over 1.3 million citizens of the Houston area are suffering without any air conditioning. Heat is the leading cause of death in the United States, and recent studies show that the number of heat-related deaths only counts heatstroke instead of also including extreme heat related to heart attacks and numerous other dangerous diseases and conditions.
Since citizens have no AC, they are resorting to other options, like using gas-powered generators. Unfortunately, two people have already died in Houston's main county due to carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust, and local officials stated that in 24 hours, they have already received over 200 calls for cabon monoxide poisoning. People are starting to become annoyed with CenterPoint Energy, the company that supplies power to most of Houston, as it has been five days since Beryl hit and over 1 million of their customers still have no electricity. They stated that they hope to restore power to 400,000 people today and 350,000 more people tomorrow. However, CenterPoint said that around 500,000 people will still not get electricity back until next week, as numerous areas have been severely affected-- trees have taken down entire power grids and hundreds of power lines are down. Crews now need to replace each pole, which is painstaking work for CenterPoint.
The shortage of electricity is causing other problems, too. One woman died after her oxygen-supplying machine ran out of battery and her generator stopped working. In addition, nine different fire stations across Houston had to temporarily shut down because they did not have generators. Aggravated citizens without power are having more heated arguments with each other, and there have been multiple reports of people getting extremely angry with CenterPoint utility workers for not fixing the electricity fast enough.
All of this is due to climate change-- most of Texas' power grid was built over 40 to 50 years ago, meaning that it wasn't built to withstand such extreme weather events.
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