A day after Tropical Storm Beryl pounded Houston, flooding roads and highways and killing at least four people, Texas officials were struggling to restore power to millions of residents as scorching heat returned to the region.
The storm made landfall in Texas as a Category 1 hurricane around 4 a.m. Monday and weakened as it passed over the sprawling city and its suburbs, but its strong winds still unsettled Houston residents for the second time in two months, after deadly thunderstorms struck the city in May.
Many trees were lost in Houston, including two that fell on homes and killed residents.
The storm packed sustained winds of 65 mph as it passed through Houston, but also experienced hurricane-force gusts of over 80 mph in and around the city, causing breaking branches and downed trees throughout the city.
Two of the confirmed storm deaths on Monday were caused by trees falling on homes and crushing people inside.
In one case, a tree fell on a home in the Atascocita neighborhood, northeast of the city, killing a man who was home with his family. The 53-year-old man was killed, the Harris County Sheriff's Office said in a social media post. Another person was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the local fire department said.
The other 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 stalling like Hurricane Harvey.
Beryl dumped heavy rains on Houston. Floodwaters filled many of the city's drainage bayous to the top of their banks, some overflowing. Elsewhere, water filled parts of highways and underpasses. Officials said at least 47 people were rescued from high water.
A civilian officer with the Houston Police Department died when his car crashed into a flooded underpass near downtown, causing it to sink. (A fourth person died in a house fire in southeast Houston that Mayor John Whitmire said was “storm-related.”)
But neighborhoods around the city were spared widespread flooding. Unlike Hurricane Harvey, which devastated the city in 2017, Beryl moved through Houston relatively quickly, arriving in the early morning and leaving the city by the afternoon.
Water levels remained high in many places but had already begun to recede in some places on Monday and were expected to continue falling on Tuesday.
Millions of people are without power and it is unclear when power will be restored.
As the storm passed, the biggest problem for Houston residents was widespread power shortages. CenterPoint Energy, the main power supplier, said Monday that more than 2 million customers were without power, and officials gave no immediate estimate for when power would be restored.
About 1 in 5 Texas power customers were without power by midday Monday, with most of the outages in the Houston area.
“The vast majority of us are without power,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county's top elected official, said at a press conference Monday afternoon. She said about 10,000 electrical crews, including 7,000 from outside the Houston area who were rushed to help, were ready to begin repairs as soon as it was safe to do so.
CenterPoint said in a statement that customers in the hardest-hit areas should prepare for extended periods of power outages.
“This is going to be a multi-day restoration effort,” said Thomas Gleason, chairman of the state Public Utilities Commission.
The damage in the United States pales in comparison to what happened in the Caribbean.
The storm has weakened considerably since its peak in the Caribbean. Beryl formed in June and strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane, the fastest recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.
The storm killed at least 11 people on several Caribbean islands, including Jamaica., And in Venezuela.
In Grenada, on the islands of Carriacou and Petite Martinique, Beryl, which struck as a Category 4 hurricane on July 1, destroyed about 98% of the buildings housing about 10,000 people, according to officials.
The storm is weakening, but tornadoes remain possible.
Beryl is moving out of Texas and is forecast to continue north through Louisiana and Arkansas.
The storm continues to weaken as it moves inland, but tornadoes remain possible, and forecasters issued tornado watches for parts of East Texas and Louisiana on Monday.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a press conference that “multiple tornadoes” were reported in northeast Texas on Monday.
Judson Jones Contributed report.
