Residents of Houston senior living facility suffer in heat, without power or assistance

Millions of people in the greater Houston area remained without power, with no end in sight, a day after Hurricane Beryl pounded southeast Texas with torrential rain and high winds. Yet those most vulnerable because of their age or health were most at risk because of the sweltering summer heat.

Among the dead was Judith Greet, 71, of nearby Crystal Beach. She suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and died after her oxygen machine stopped working because of the outages, authorities said Tuesday.

At the Walipp complex, just south of downtown Houston, Johnson had to navigate several flights of dark stairs and a broken-glass front door to get a cold drink at a nearby gas station, where lines to fill up snaked around the block, with occasional fights.

The retired deli worker then returned to her apartment, opened the windows and looked for some wind. Temperatures were expected to climb to 105 degrees. Her supply of Vienna sausages would soon run out. She had some food in the freezer but wasn’t sure how long it would last.

On the third floor, Melvin Williams, 61, sits in a breezeway next to his walker. He is disabled because of blood clots in his legs that make walking difficult. He has no car, it is unclear when buses will resume and his family is in Dallas, he said. “All my friends are in this building.”

Williams estimated that he had enough food to last four days. “After that,” he said, looking worried, “I’ll have to find something else.”

The 56-unit complex was already fully occupied before Hurricane Beryl, but residents who had relatives nearby were moving in. Some persuaded neighbors in their 90s to leave, especially if they lived on the top floor.

Warren Moss, 94, a retired carpenter and U.S. Army veteran, sat in the lobby wearing his Korean War veteran cap as he waited for his granddaughter to pick him up. Although he had enough water and other supplies to stay in his fourth-floor apartment, “it’s hard to get down those stairs,” he said.

Others had nowhere to escape, or no way to do so.

“Where is the Red Cross? Why is there no one here?” asks Jessica Gonzalez, a resident.

Gonzalez, 59, works in the informal sector, is disabled, walks with a cane and can’t climb stairs. She had heard about a day shelter with electricity, air conditioning and food — a shelter set up in a Gallery Furniture store that runs on a generator north of town. But her car battery had died in the storm, so before she could get out, she had to ask a neighbor for help.

She criticized the city for not being better prepared.

“Why aren’t they up to the task? They just build and build. You can’t even flush the toilet, and it stinks,” Gonzalez said.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Gallery Furniture shelter had taken in 4,000 people since Beryl’s accident Monday, including some who were rescued by the store’s emergency vehicle, owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale said. He shared messages on his cellphone from people still stranded at home. One was an 80-year-old grandmother, the other a 12-year-old girl who was bedridden and dependent on oxygen and a feeding tube.

“Getting the power back on is a major issue,” McIngvale said. “We’ve had two or three (people) out here recharging their oxygen machines.”

Ronny Linley, 67, arrived Tuesday with his oxygen machine, found a spot in the showroom where he could plug in the device, grabbed a chair and put on his mask. A Navy veteran and retired truck driver, he uses the machine every four hours for COPD. His home in the Greenspoint neighborhood still had no electricity.

“I’m very worried about him,” said his girlfriend Maria Jones, 65, who drove him to the store. “He’s like a fish without oxygen, he can’t breathe.”

Linley was already looking at the clock. The Gallery Furniture day shelter would close at 8pm and he didn’t know where to go after that except home.

“I guess we have to suffer,” he said.