Important Takeaways:
- For more than a week, some residents of the nation’s fourth largest city were left to sleep in their cars, shuffle perilously with canes and walkers across dark rooms and corridors, and watch food and medications spoil and critical medical equipment become inoperable. At times, they cried in desperation after discovering the bodies of neighbors who succumbed to the heat following a comparatively mild Category 1 hurricane.
- At least 14 Houston-area deaths were confirmed to be hurricane-related, including seven people – ranging in age from 50 to 110 – who died from “heat exposure due to power loss,” according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
- CenterPoint Energy told CNN in a statement it was “committed to doing a thorough review of our Hurricane Beryl response.”
- “We are engaging with community leaders, elected officials, local clergy leadership and others across the area to learn about how we can be more responsive to their needs and concerns,” the statement said.
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Important Takeaways:
- After Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas early Monday, knocking out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses, unleashing heavy rain and killing at least three people it moved east and later weakened to a tropical depression, the National Hurricane Center said Monday evening. The fast-moving tempest threatened to carve a harsh path over several more states in coming days.
- Texas state and local officials warned it could take several days to restore power after Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane and toppled 10 transmission lines and knocked down trees that took down power lines.
- At least two people were killed when trees fell on homes, and the National Hurricane Center said damaging winds and flash flooding would continue as Beryl pushes inland. A third person, a civilian employee of the Houston Police Department, was killed when he was trapped in flood waters under a highway overpass, Houston Mayor John Whitmire said. There were no immediate reports of widespread structural damage, however.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall Monday on Carriacou Island, was the first Category 4 storm ever to form in the Atlantic Ocean in June.
- No storm has reached Category 4 intensity so early in the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
- The previous record was held by Hurricane Dennis, which slammed into Cuba as a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005.
- The storm then intensified on Monday, making history again as the earliest Category 5 storm on record in the Atlantic.
- The storm has killed at least four people so far, and officials said the number of fatalities could increase in the coming days.
- In a news briefing Monday, Prime Minister of Grenada Dickon Mitchell said Hurricane Beryl flattened Carriacou in half an hour.
- Rapid intensification is a major concern because storms that strengthen that quickly tend to be more destructive and can strike before people have time to evacuate or make adequate preparations.
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