Power outages in Houston, Texas, continued for days after Beryl. Why?

Andrew Johnson celebrated his 34th birthday Friday in a house without power, confined mostly to his bedroom where a single window air conditioner was powered by a generator. He is among hundreds of thousands of Houston-area residents still without power due to sweltering heat, more than five days after Hurricane Beryl struck.

The storm hit Texas in the early hours of Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, knocking down trees and power lines and forcing some residents to sleep in their cars to cool down. At least 13 people died in the area alone, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Johnson, who works in the oil and gas industry, said he and his fiancée were among the lucky ones. They haven’t had power since 4 or 5 a.m. Monday, but friends from other parts of Texas brought them generators and gasoline. They were able to power the essentials: their refrigerator, freezer and the bedroom where they sleep.

Still, he added, “yesterday was a bit of a depressing day, waking up to this, living off generator power and not seeing an end to the power shortage.”

The couple was able to travel to another Houston neighborhood for an anniversary dinner at a restaurant with power, but Johnson said he was looking forward to celebrating once the power was fully restored. In the meantime, he said all he could do was rely on his support network and provide one for others. A neighboring couple in their 80s came over to Johnson’s house to sit in his bedroom and cool off in front of the window air conditioner because they didn’t have a generator, he said.

Amid the outages, the National Weather Service issued heat advisories for the Houston area Tuesday through Friday with heat indices reaching 106. Saturday’s temperatures cooled somewhat with rain to peak in the 90s, but the NWS forecast Saturday called for high temperatures on a “generally rising trend” next week, reaching the mid- to upper 90s.

Prolonged power outages can have dangerous, even deadly, consequences following major disasters, according to Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University Climate School. Very young children, the elderly and anyone with underlying health conditions are particularly at risk.

“We often see that indirect deaths from disasters outnumber direct deaths, and that’s due to a variety of factors, including power outages and the stress that people are under,” he said. “There are people who have to work outside for long periods of time. Food is wasted for people who are food insecure, who have transportation issues so they don’t have extra money to go shopping, who don’t have a car to get to a neighborhood where there is electricity.”

BERYL’S AFTERNOON:Heat pushes Texans to sleep in their cars

Utility company under scrutiny and demands accountability

Many Texas residents blamed CenterPoint, the Houston-based company that provides electricity to the region. Graffiti on the side of I-10 read “CenterPointless” after days without power for more than 1 million customers, Houston Public Media reported. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the state’s political leaders would hold the company accountable for its lack of preparedness.

“There’s blame on all sides,” Schlegelmilch said. “It’s convenient for the government to point the finger at the utility, and it’s probably appropriate in this case to ask them tough questions, but that doesn’t absolve regulators or the government from taking further action.”

Houston has long been known to be prone to hurricanes, Schlegelmilch said, and Beryl — while severe and destructive — was not at all the kind of storm the city needed to be prepared for.

“It raises a lot of questions: Why is it taking so long? Why was there no preparation? Why were people caught off guard?” he said.

CenterPoint said it was working to restore power to about 85% of affected customers by the end of the weekend. At the peak of the outage, more than 2.2 million people were without power. As of Saturday afternoon, more than 550,000 customers were without power, a number that declined throughout the day, according to CenterPoint data.

“Based on the projections that we received, we thought we had the staffing we needed. What happened then, as is often the case with weather — it’s unpredictable — is we had a greater impact than what was anticipated for our region,” company spokeswoman Alyssia Oshodi told NPR in response to criticism that CenterPoint didn’t have enough outside staff ready to respond ahead of the storm.

USA TODAY has reached out to CenterPoint for comment.

“CenterPoint must be prepared for any storm in the Gulf that could possibly hit Houston, no matter what the forecast says,” Patrick said in a social media post.

And after the storm, residents demanded better communication from CenterPoint about its progress. Johnson said he doesn’t entirely blame the company for not preparing, since Beryl’s planned route didn’t initially include Houston, but now he can’t get a clear answer when he calls for updates on power in his neighborhood.

Near downtown Houston, Ivan Zamarron, 32, questioned the numbers released by CenterPoint and government officials. A map released by the company appeared to show that power had been restored to his home while the lights were still out, Zamarron said.

As climate change and changing weather patterns drive increased demand for electric infrastructure and a future of increasingly extreme storms, Schlegelmilch said it is important for state leaders and electric utilities to examine their funding priorities and invest in strengthening and modernizing the electric grid.

“We are really behind in terms of our ability to meet day-to-day (energy consumption) needs, as well as our resilience to storms like Beryl,” he said.

Low-income populations and communities of color are most affected by these impacts, he said.

“We see it on racial and socioeconomic lines. While climate change affects all of us, it affects the most vulnerable among us, and it’s the echoes of housing policy from a century ago, which was based on racial and socioeconomic lines, that still haunt us today,” Schlegelmilch said.

“We can’t live like this”

On Saturday morning, Zamarron continued to search for gas. The apartment he and his sister share, located just across the bridge from downtown, had been without power for six days. They have been staying with friends in the neighborhood who have electricity while their three dogs are boarded, though Zamarron decided to sleep in his apartment last night, on the tile floor with the front door open to let in air. It was 90 degrees inside, which Zamarron said was chilly because of recent rain.

Zamarron, an insurance company manager, said he was lucky his employees had a place to go, and could work in coffee shops or go to a spicy chicken restaurant twice a day. When it got too hot, he would sit in his car and enjoy the air conditioning. Others were not so lucky.

At a gas station near downtown, he saw workers sitting outside because the store’s power was out.

His two friends in the suburbs of Katy, to the west, and Pasadena, to the east, had no electricity, spanning nearly 50 miles.

Born and raised in Mexico, Zamarron wonders why a major American city can go so long without electricity. His home country, he explained, is considered poor, but that would never happen for days and days there. He blamed the energy providers for the situation.

“They’re the only ones who benefit,” he said. “But it’s a huge city. We can’t live like this. It’s hot. It’s horrible.”

“Tangible blessing” in Humble

Dominion Church International in the Houston suburb of Humble is doing what it does best: serving others, said the Rev. Paul Anthony Hardin, the church’s senior pastor and bishop. In an interview with USA TODAY, he called it a “tangible blessing” as congregants worked Saturday to clear debris and downed trees, check in on the elderly and gather food to prepare for Sunday’s service. The church never lost power and stayed open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. so people could cool off indoors with air conditioning, Hardin said.

Hardin and his wife, also the church’s pastor, have hosted about a dozen people at the rectory, the parish house where they live, because they lost power for only a day. Many of those staying at their homes have health problems that make it difficult to withstand the heat, he said.

On Sunday, Hardin plans to hold an 11 a.m. service in a nearby school gym that can accommodate more people than the church. The service will be short so they can serve spaghetti afterward to people who need meals.

Last Sunday, hours before the widespread power outages, he delivered a sermon as part of his Bible series on Joseph and character. Hardin said Joseph faced challenges throughout his life but persisted in blessing people. He never finished his sermon, so he plans to continue the message Sunday.

“Character is truly tested in adversity,” he said. “It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to come together as a community, to love one another. Not just by what we say, but by what we do.”

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