Houston battles heat following storm damage, power outages

The Memorial Day holiday marked the start of “extremely dangerous heat conditions” as parts of the city still struggled to recover from the May 16 storm that tore down shade trees, destroyed roofs and left Many homeowners sweat in homes without electricity.

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As the National Weather Service issued a steady stream of weekend heat warnings, a group of men escaped the sun to play a game of dominoes on the shaded porch of Robert Paterson’s longtime home in the north end of Kashmere Street, a historically black neighborhood across the border. of a marshalling yard.

Recent storms tore down the six older trees that kept his yard’s temperature low enough for shade barbecues, blew a hole in his roof and left him without light or air conditioning for days. His front porch was the coolest place left standing.

“I just endured,” said Paterson, a 74-year-old Army veteran who has lived at home for 40 years.

Hot weather can create major health hazards for residents like Paterson. A growing body of medical research links highs to problems ranging from heatstroke to cardiac distress. Extreme temperatures earlier this year increased health risks, before residents’ bodies were accustomed to the change, and while some were still without power or spending hours outside in the heat clearing debris from the storm.

Data from Climate Central suggests that climate change is leading to high temperatures in Texas early in the season, a continuation of a global heat streak that began last summer. Data compiled by the Texas Department of State Health Services showed the state recorded more than 300 heat deaths in 2023, early in the streak, a record since the agency began to follow it in 1989. Medical experts said the number of heat deaths was underestimated: high temperatures. cause problems such as heart attacks that are not attributed to heat in emergency room records, or tax people’s bodies in a way that leaves them vulnerable to future illness.

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Dr. Sadeer Al-Kindi, a preventative cardiologist at Houston Methodist Hospital, said some of the impacts of hot weather that go beyond dehydration, heatstroke and sunstroke are nuanced and can be challenging to be identified as the result of heat.

“We see that there is a significant impact on the heart and heart health, as well as a significant impact on kidney health. These are (already) major causes of death in the United States,” said Al- Kindi. He added that sometimes the health impacts of a heatwave can be delayed, since “the body tries to adapt, but that adjustment itself is an overload.”

Mike Johnson’s block near Halls Bayou, east of Houston, was left for more than a week without power or cooling help after the windy storm as temperatures soared.

Johnson, 44, took a week off from her maintenance job to stay home with her 69-year-old mother. The two men left their windows and doors open, sleeping on couches near the entrance to take advantage of occasional cross breezes and chase away the swarms of mosquitoes that followed the warm, humid air inside.

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“My mom was really exhausted from the heat,” Johnson said Saturday. “We were both exhausted. When the lights and air conditioning came back on yesterday, we slept for a whole day. We didn’t hear anything.”

Heat can drop your blood pressure when your heart doesn’t accelerate long enough to compensate for other blood changes, said Dr. Brett Perkison, an occupational health specialist who has studied heat-related illnesses. “There’s a lack of perfusion to the brain, and that’s where this confusion and lethargy comes from,” he said.

Robert Bullard, who directs the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University, said he received a number of calls last week from people on the city’s northeast side who needed help calming down .

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“Low-income neighborhoods have a high percentage of older households on fixed incomes, and when it’s hot, they often don’t like to run the air conditioning because it’s going to push their utilities to a higher level than they need. they can afford it. So when the lights go out it’s going to be hot,” Bullard said. “A lot of them don’t drive anymore, so they’re stuck in these houses.”

While many Houstonians got power back last week, Regional Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience Director Stefania Tomaskovic worries about those left without power in their homes. CenterPoint Energy’s online tracker said more than 1,000 of their customers were without power during Sunday afternoon’s extreme heat.

Some residents, having regained power, still spent the hot and humid weekend outside, picking up the pieces of their homes damaged by the recent storm, temperatures be damned. Instead of playing dominoes in the shade, longtime Paterson neighbor Willie Whitfield wandered into his scorching backyard Saturday afternoon to dig through tree branches stacked higher than his head by volunteers .

“I have to find a way to turn the water on,” the 78-year-old said. He had a few bottles in the house, but it was hot since the wires in his refrigerator had been damaged during the week’s hustle and bustle. He had just turned on the air conditioning in his window, which was struggling to cool one person’s house despite a hole left in the roof by a falling tree.

Whitfield hoped to stay cool enough all weekend. Either way, he said, he had to start picking up the pieces the storm had left behind.