After Hurricane Beryl, why aren’t all Houston cooling centers open?

Extreme heat doesn’t come with the fury of a hurricane, toppling trees and flooding underpasses. Yet it kills more people in the United States each year than all other natural disasters combined. It’s clearly a particular problem here in swampy, scorching Houston, where hurricanes easily knock out the power grid and, with it, our air conditioning.

It is shocking, then, that of the city’s 13 multi-service centers for people seeking air conditioning and refuge from the heat, only one has a permanent generator. The city has only seven backup generators it can send to the centers, and none of them are powerful enough to power an entire building.

When the derecho struck in May, killing eight people and leaving nearly a million without power as temperatures soared, CenterPoint had to provide 13 emergency generators to help power vital facilities like cooling centers.

Mayor John Whitmire told the Chronicle at the time that he had reached out to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and President Joe Biden’s administration to find a longer-term solution. That solution didn’t arrive in time for Hurricane Beryl.

More than 48 hours after the hurricane struck, at least 1.3 million Houston residents are still without power, even as temperatures are expected to reach 105 degrees Fahrenheit. As of Wednesday, only six air conditioning centers in the city were open to the public. This is unacceptable.

It wasn’t just the lack of generators that complicated efforts to open the centers, Whitmire spokeswoman Mary Benton said this week. In the days leading up to Beryl, Whitmire kept a close eye on the forecast as he coordinated with the Office of Emergency Management and prepared each department, bolstering their facilities and supplies, she said. Still, the hurricane’s unexpected power and its turn north toward Houston caught the city’s responders by surprise.

“City workers are struggling like everyone else in Houston,” she said. “People were prepared and woke up with no power and a tree in their roof. How do you prevent that? In some cases, it’s impossible.”

For Vanessa Orellana, 38, who moved here from El Salvador 12 years ago, it’s hard to understand how a modern city like Houston can be so vulnerable to extreme weather.

“I feel like we’re never prepared for anything here,” she told a member of the editorial board in Spanish. “If it freezes, the grid goes down. If it gets extremely hot, it goes down. Hurricanes, tropical storms, all of those things can knock out our power.”

We met Orellana Tuesday afternoon outside the Southwest Multi-Service Center, between Gulfton and Sharpstown. It was the first refreshment center in town to open after Beryl, and the third Orellana had visited that day. She and her husband were desperate for a place where their two young daughters, Alejandra and Alaia, could cool off. But with their 3-year-old pug, Romeo, in tow, the family had been turned away at the Lakewood church and the West Gray Multi-Service Center; no animals other than service animals were allowed inside. Her hair matted with sweat, Alejandra carried a furiously panting Romeo, his tongue hanging crookedly out of his mouth.

The Southwest center had initially told them the same thing, but the family was eventually allowed to sit at the entrance for a bit of respite. They were told the center allowed pets if they were in cages, but that hadn’t been made clear in the text message Orellana received with the list of available refreshment centers.

Joseph Cashin hadn’t even gotten that message. The 21-year-old Briton was in his apartment when the hurricane hit, knocking out his electricity, internet and cell service. With no family or friends in Houston, he didn’t know where to go. After wandering outside to escape his hot apartment, he spotted a mobile charging van outside the Southwest Center and was relieved to find a place to cool off. “I feel like I’m in someone’s mouth,” he told us. “It’s SO hot.”

Neither Cashin’s nor Orellana’s family had any idea where to go once the center closed at 6 p.m. They told us they had no choice but to go home and toss and turn in their beds during the muggy night.

Government-run cooling centers aren’t a cure-all. In fact, most people first turn to informal cooling centers, like HEB, Kroger, and Walmart, for help. Often, that’s because many people don’t even know the city’s cooling centers exist. A 2011 survey of Houston adults found that of 322 respondents who were too hot in their homes, only 36 percent knew what cooling centers were. When people do hear about these centers, they may think the locations are too far out of the way or assume they only serve the very poor and elderly.

For now, Houstonians looking to escape the heat have several options, including urban cooling centers and facilities hosted by nonprofits and county partners. In addition to the multi-service centers, Houston libraries (except the downtown library) will operate as cooling centers during regular business hours. Individuals who do not have adequate transportation to a designated cooling center can call 3-1-1 to request a free ride from METRO or zTrip.

The city should certainly do more to publicize available centers, starting with posting a full list of available spots on the “cooling center” section of its website. It should also clearly outline pet policies so people aren’t forced to waste gas, time, and energy traveling from one location to another. Turning cooling centers into overnight shelters should also be as high a priority as generators.

But the first order of business is to make sure all cooling centers have power. Whitmire seems to agree. We’re glad to hear that when Rep. Al Green and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz were in town after Beryl, “the mayor was very direct with them,” Benton told us. Houston needs recovery money, and fast — and generators are at the top of the list. Four centers have already received generator grants, she said.

Last summer, the hottest summer in human history, Texas set a new record for heat-related deaths. We must not wait for the first reported heat-related death after Beryl to take urgent action.