Some Houston-area residents feel hopeless and abandoned after more than a week without power

CNN
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Theodore Doyle, an 81-year-old retired executive with the former U.S. Customs Service, woke up in his hot, humid northeast Houston apartment, in a bed soaked with sweat.

Doyle finally checked into a $98-a-night hotel room Tuesday night after enduring a worsening bout 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 stifling and it’s hard to breathe,” he told CNN before returning to his apartment when the power was restored Thursday afternoon. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

During the outage, a generator powered an elevator and a large air-conditioned lounge in the complex, a lifeline for many who rely on wheelchairs and electric scooters to get around and oxygen machines for lung conditions. At times, as many as 40 residents sought shelter in the lounge. Others remained in their stifling apartments. Some stayed with relatives whose power had been restored.

“A friend just turned 95 about a month ago,” Doyle said. “Another friend of mine is in his 90s and a lot of us are in our 80s. It’s tough. We’re not as sharp as we used to be.”

As of Saturday afternoon, about 2,500 customers of CenterPoint Energy, Houston’s main electric utility, were without power, according to PowerOutage.us. That number fluctuated throughout the day. It’s unclear whether those customers have been without power since Beryl hit the Gulf Coast as a hurricane on July 8, leaving more than 2 million customers without power, mostly in the Houston area. More than 135,000 CenterPoint customers were without power Monday night.

The company said in a statement that customers without power were “primarily isolated cases,” where homes or equipment suffered severe damage from the storm. CenterPoint, which has 2.8 million customers in the Houston area, said some current outages may be related to Saturday morning’s storms. “For safety reasons, our crews stop work when lightning strikes are present,” the statement said.

At least 14 deaths in the Houston area have been confirmed as hurricane-related, including seven people — ages 50 to 110 — who died “from heat exposure due to a power outage,” according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. In total, more than 20 deaths in Harris and neighboring counties have been attributed to the storm, according to the Houston Chronicle and other local media. Older adults were particularly vulnerable, and officials said the death toll could rise.

For more than a week, some residents of the nation’s fourth-largest city slept in their cars, trudged dangerously with canes and walkers through dark rooms and hallways, and watched as food and medicine spoiled and essential medical supplies became unusable. At times, they wept in despair after discovering the bodies of neighbors who had succumbed to the heat after a relatively mild Category 1 hurricane.

“It’s unimaginable that this is happening in 2024,” Denise Furlough, who delivered food, batteries and ice to her 86-year-old father during more than a week without power at his Alameda Plaza home, told CNN Saturday. “I was just afraid that I was going to go out there and he wasn’t going to be alive.”

On Tuesday, in Houston’s Museum District, Pat Baker went to a condominium complex to check on a neighbor with health problems who was renting her daughter’s apartment. The neighbor didn’t answer.

“I unlocked the door and I found her,” Baker, fighting back tears, told CNN affiliate KHOU. “You know, it’s been hot and miserable and I’m sick of it, you know. I’m sick of it.”

Power was restored to the condominium complex later in the afternoon after the body was removed from the apartment, the station reported.

The latest name added to the list of confirmed Beryl-related deaths in Harris County is Christine Davis, who turned 110 in May, according to the 110 Club, a website dedicated to supercentenarians. She died Tuesday at Memorial Hermann Hospital Northeast from hyperthermia caused by “exposure to environmental heat due to a power outage,” according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

Pamela Jarrett, 64, is another confirmed victim of the storm. She died of hyperthermia on July 11, days after the hurricane hit, at her home in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston. Relatives told CNN affiliate KTRK Wednesday that Jarrett required a wheelchair and a feeding tube.

“This could have been prevented, and she shouldn’t have died,” said her sister Janet, who cared for her and struggled to keep the power supply charged during the outage. She said she tried to keep Jarrett cool with ice and water until she became unresponsive.

“I tried to save her, but I couldn’t,” Janet Jarrett told the station.

Power was restored to the Jarrett home on Tuesday.

In the town of Humble, about 20 miles north of Houston, Christina Bourgeois, her three children — ages 5 to 9 — and their dog Mimosa spent the first night after the storm in their Dodge Journey, outside their home. She kept the Dodge running with the air conditioning on because of the heat.

“I slept in the driver’s seat,” she told CNN on Friday. “It was horrible. You know, my youngest son, I had to get up and take him inside to go to the bathroom.”

The children were then placed with relatives and Bourgeois, 32, spent every night in the car until the electricity was restored on Wednesday.

“I would wake up every two or three hours to turn the air conditioning on and then off,” she says of the nights she spent alone in the Dodge. “I hadn’t slept. I was exhausted. I was starting to bloat. I had bags under my eyes. Any noise would wake me up because I had the windows down… Any rustling of leaves or even a car going by would wake me up.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened CenterPoint Energy on Sunday with action if it didn’t address concerns about the extended outage. And the Texas Public Utilities Commission said it would investigate the company’s response to the power outages, according to Chairman Thomas Gleason. He told reporters Monday that the company’s ability to maintain its infrastructure and communications with customers was in question.

CenterPoint Energy told CNN in a statement that it is “committed to conducting a thorough review of its response to Hurricane Beryl.”

“We are working with community leaders, elected officials, local clergy leaders and others in the area to learn how we can be more responsive to their needs and concerns,” the statement said.

Before returning to his apartment Thursday, Doyle said he had $150 worth of food in his refrigerator that had spoiled. He said he wasn’t sure about the condition of the insulin he left behind. He blamed the power company for leaving thousands of Houston residents stranded in the heat and darkness.

“You have no idea how frustrating this is,” he said. “We shouldn’t have to go through this.”

Furlough, whose father, Julius Gordon, is a cancer survivor and suffers from heart disease, said he, like many Houstonians, felt hopeless and abandoned until power was restored to his home Tuesday.

His father told CNN: “You’re just there. You’re vegetating.”

CNN’s Amy Simonson and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.