Houston ‘better prepared than ever’ for Hurricane Beryl, mayor says – Houston Public Media

Houston Mayor John Whitmire denounced a city councilor’s comments that the city should have been better prepared for Hurricane Beryl during a news conference Sunday night.

Whitmire said Councilman Edward Pollard was quoted in news articles saying lives could have been saved if the city had been better prepared for the hurricane that devastated the city and killed 22 people.

RELATED: Hurricane Beryl has caused at least 22 deaths in the Houston area, more than half linked to power outages

The city was “better prepared than ever” before Beryl, Whitmire said Sunday.

“To claim otherwise is either dishonest, misinformed, or both,” he said.

At a council meeting last week, Pollard said the city was not fully mobilized for the impending storm.

“You can’t say you’re well prepared and then go a week without power because of a Category 1 disaster,” he said. “What if it’s a Category 2 disaster? What if it’s a Category 3 disaster? So we have to be transparent with the public and let them know that we didn’t do everything we could have done.”

“From the city’s perspective, we weren’t fully mobilized,” he said. “From CenterPoint’s perspective, we weren’t fully mobilized. We were scrambling after the fact and the city felt it.”

RELATED: ‘We need a plan that actually works’: Houston City Council questions Whitmire’s storm resilience plan

Whitmire said Sunday that Pollard’s comments about the city’s lack of preparedness were mentioned in news reports about Randall Richardson, a Houston Police Department employee who drowned while driving to work after his vehicle was submerged in floodwaters the morning of the hurricane.

In a statement after the news conference, Pollard said his comments focused solely on the logistics of mobilizing officers the day before “to ensure their safety and preparedness ahead of Hurricane Beryl’s arrival.”

“It is deeply disheartening to see our city resort to a press conference designed to smear me politically,” he said.

Interim Police Chief Larry Satterwhite echoed Whitmire’s comments at the news conference, saying the police department had been mobilized a day in advance in preparation for Beryl. Despite the hurricane’s unpredictable path, Satterwhite said the police department “didn’t take any chances.”

“We have deployed deep-sea rescue assets,” he said. “We have deployed boats. We have brought in officers at night to set up barricades in low-lying areas. We have done all of that and more and we have advised everyone to be on high alert.”

He said city employees and agents were advised to take precautions, but many Tier 1 employees did not report to work that day for various reasons.

“With every officer and every employee, it’s always about responding when it’s safe to do so, where it’s safe to go in and fight, because we don’t want this type of tragedy to happen,” Whitmire said.