Texas heat-related deaths rise after Beryl left millions without power for days or longer

SPRING, Texas – As the temperature rose in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shared with her sister after losing electricity in Hurricane Berylshe did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old brother calm.

But on the fourth day without power, she woke up to the labored breathing of Pamela Jarrett, who used a wheelchair and relied on a feeding tube. Paramedics were called, but she was pronounced dead in hospital, with the coroner 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’s landfall, heat-related deaths during prolonged power outages brought the storm-related death toll to at least 23 in Texas.

The combination of the scorching summer heat and the residents unable to turn on the air conditioning In the days following the Category 1 storm’s arrival on July 8, it resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions for some people in the fourth-largest city in the United States.

Beryl cut electricity to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted days or longer, and hospitals reported a spike in heat-related illnesses.

Power was finally restored to full power last week after more than a week of widespread outages. The slow pace in the Houston area has left the region’s electric provider, CenterPoint Energy, under increasing scrutiny about whether he was sufficiently prepared.

While he it could take weeks or even years before the total number of human casualties from the Texas storm is known, understanding this number helps plan for the future, experts say.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, which brought strong winds and flooding, deaths included people killed by falling trees and people who drowned when their vehicles were submerged in floodwaters. In the days after the storm passed, deaths included people who fell while cutting branches from damaged trees and 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 her sister was in good health before they lost power to their home in the spring.

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

Authorities are still working to determine whether some deaths that have already occurred should be considered related to the storm. But even when those numbers come in, getting a clear picture of the storm’s impact could take much longer.

Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, estimated that it won’t be until late July that a preliminary count will be possible.

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

Experts say that while a count of storm-related deaths compiled from death certificates is useful, an analysis of the excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm could give a more complete picture of the toll. To do this, researchers compare the number of people who died during that period with how many would be expected to die under normal conditions.

Analyzing excess deaths helps count deaths that may have been missed, said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

Both the approach of counting death certificates and calculating excess deaths have their own benefits when it comes to storms, said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Center for Climate and Health at the Boston University School of Public Health.

Analysis of excess deaths provides a better estimate of the total number of people killed, so it is useful for public health planning and emergency management, as well as assessing the impact of climate change, he said.

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

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

Stengle reported from Dallas. Sean Murphy contributed to this report from Oklahoma City.