Heat-related deaths in Texas rise after Beryl leaves millions without power for days or longer

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As temperatures soared in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shared with her sister after losing power due to Hurricane Beryl, she did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sister cool.

But on the fourth day without power, she woke up to hear Pamela Jarrett, who was in a wheelchair and dependent on a feeding tube, gasping for air. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at the hospital, with the medical examiner saying her death was caused by heat.

“It’s so hard to know that she’s gone now because this wasn’t supposed to happen to her,” Janet Jarrett said.

Nearly two weeks after Beryl made landfall, heat-related deaths during extended power outages have brought the storm-related death toll to at least 23 in Texas.

The combination of scorching summer heat and residents’ inability to turn on their air conditioning in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 has led to increasingly dangerous living conditions for some in the fourth-largest U.S. city.

Beryl knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted for days or longer, and hospitals reported an increase in heat-related illnesses.

Power was finally restored to most cities last week after more than a week of widespread outages. The slow pace of distribution in the Houston area put the area’s electricity provider, CenterPoint Energy, under increasing scrutiny over whether it was adequately prepared.

Although it may be weeks or even years before the full death toll from the Texas storm is known, understanding that number helps plan for the future, experts say.

What is known so far about the deaths?

Shortly after the storm, which brought high winds and flooding, passed, people died in falling trees and people drowned when their vehicles were submerged in floodwaters. In the days following the storm, people fell while cutting branches from damaged trees and there were heat-related deaths.

Half of the deaths attributed to the storm in Harris County, where Houston is located, were heat-related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

Jarrett, who has cared for her sister since she was injured in an attack six years ago, said her “sassy” sister has done everything from owning a vintage store in Harlem, New York, to working as an artist.

“She had a great personality,” Jarrett said, adding that his sister was healthy before they lost power to their Spring home.

When will the full death toll be known?

With power outages and cleanup efforts still underway, the death toll will likely continue to rise.

Authorities are still trying to determine whether any of the deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm-related. But even when those numbers are known, it could be a long time before we have a clear picture of the storm’s toll.

Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, said it could be late July before a preliminary count is available.

In the state’s vital statistics system, there is a prompt to indicate whether the death is storm-related and medical certifiers are asked to send additional information about how the death is storm-related, Anton said.

Experts say that while counting storm-related deaths from death certificates is useful, analyzing excess deaths during and after the storm can give a more complete picture of the toll. To do this, researchers compare the number of people who died during that period to the number who would have died under normal conditions.

Analyzing excess mortality allows us to count deaths that might have been overlooked, said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

What do the different toll numbers tell us?

The approach of counting death certificates and calculating excess deaths each has its own advantages when it comes to storms, said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Center for Climate and Health at Boston University School of Public Health.

Analysis of excess mortality gives a better estimate of the total number of people killed, so it is useful for public health and emergency management planning, in addition to assessing the impact of climate change, he said.

But “that doesn’t tell you who,” he said, and understanding the individual circumstances of storm deaths is important to help show what puts individuals at risk.

“If I just tell you 200 people died, that doesn’t tell you the story of what happened to those people, which tells us something about what we can hopefully do better to prepare or help people prepare for the future,” Wellenius said. ___

Stengle reported from Dallas. Sean Murphy contributed from Oklahoma City.