Important Takeaways:
- With around 270,000 homes and businesses still without power in the Houston area almost a week after Hurricane Beryl hit Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said he’s demanding an investigation into the response of the utility that serves the area as well as answers about its preparations for upcoming storms.
- “Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious,” Abbott said
- While CenterPoint Energy has restored power to about 2 million customers, the slow pace of recovery has put the utility, which provides electricity to the nation’s fourth-largest city, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared for the storm that left people without air conditioning in the searing summer heat.
- Abbott said he was sending a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas requiring it to investigate why restoration has taken so long and what must be done to fix it.
- With months of hurricane season left, Abbott said he’s giving CenterPoint until the end of the month to specify what it’ll be doing to reduce or eliminate power outages in the event of another storm.
- A post Sunday on CenterPoint’s website from its president and CEO, Jason Wells, said that over 2,100 utility poles were damaged during the storm and over 18,600 trees had to be removed from power lines, which impacted over 75% of the utility’s distribution circuits.
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Important Takeaways:
- More than 1.5 million Texas households were without power Monday morning as Hurricane Beryl made landfall on the state’s central coast. Beryl’s eye crossed the Texas coastline early Monday near Matagorda, Texas.
- Texas Division of Emergency Management officials warned that rain bands will lead to flooding in many areas of the state.
- Shortly before sunrise, Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas. National Weather Service updates indicate the storm brought winds of up to 80 mph and a life-threatening storm surge to the coastal area.
- On Sargent Beach. Forecasters predicted a storm surge of up to six feet in the area.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hurricane Beryl is now turning its wrath on Mexico as a Category 2 storm, weakened but still dangerous after tearing through a series of Caribbean islands in recent days.
- The NHC is forecasting dangerous hurricane-force winds, a storm surge of four to six feet and damaging waves as the storm moves inland across the northern Yucatan Peninsula during the day. It says the region could see four to six inches of rain, with up to 10 inches in some areas.
- Beryl is expected to emerge over the southwestern Gulf of Mexico on Friday night and move toward northeastern Mexico and southern Texas by the end of the weekend, bringing heavy rainfall with it.
- Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management to increase the readiness level of the state’s emergency operations center starting Friday morning.
- The United Nations is making $4 million in emergency relief funds available to Grenada, Jamaica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A growing number of humanitarian aid groups are also mobilizing to help affected residents across the Caribbean.
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Important Takeaways:
- Beryl’s ‘Armageddon-like’ impact: Few buildings stand, power grid destroyed in Caribbean
- As Hurricane Beryl bore down on Jamaica on Wednesday, the islands in its wake were getting a clearer picture of the destruction the record-setting storm left behind in the southeastern Caribbean.
- “It is almost Armageddon-like, almost total damage or destruction of all buildings whether they be public buildings, homes or other private facilities,” said Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell after a helicopter survey on Tuesday. “Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture. Complete and total destruction of the natural environment; there is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou.”
- It is now estimated that only 2% of the buildings and homes there survived — 98% have been destroyed or severely damaged.
- Beyond the immediate housing crisis, Mitchell said the electrical grid system and communication systems had been destroyed. “As of this moment, communication is still a major problem,” he said late Tuesday.
- Beryl remained a Category 4 on Wednesday as it headed toward Jamaica, which is currently under a state of emergency.
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Important Takeaways:
- Jamaica and the Cayman Islands are bracing for what could be a major blow from Hurricane Beryl.
- “Residents must take immediate precautions to protect themselves, their families and their properties,” the government of the Cayman Islands said in a news release Tuesday.
- The Category 4 storm is expected to strike Jamaica Wednesday, bringing life-threatening storm surge that could get 6 to 9 feet above normal tide levels. Flash floods and landslides are also a big concern.
- The storm killed at least four people in the Windward Islands and is reported to have “flattened” the island of Carriacou, Grenada. Damage assessment and emergency response is still underway there, as well as in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Barbados.
- Three deaths in Venezuela are also being blamed on heavy rains and flooding as the storm passed by.
- Beryl already made history as the earliest Category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record before weakening slightly to a Category 4 Tuesday afternoon.
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Important Takeaways:
- SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hurricane Beryl began pounding the southeast Caribbean on Monday as a powerful Category 4 storm after becoming the earliest storm of that strength to form in the Atlantic, fueled by record warm waters.
- The storm was expected to make landfall in the Windward Islands late Monday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center.
- Hurricane warnings were in effect for Barbados, Grenada, Tobago and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as thousands of people hunkered down in homes and shelters. The last strong hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean was Hurricane Ivan 20 years ago, which killed dozens of people in Grenada.
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