Houston community groups strive to keep powering and cooling a city hit by repeated storms

HOUSTON– The deafening hum of a generator was a welcome noise Thursday night at a Houston independent living center where several dozen seniors lost power. after Hurricane Beryl.

Joe and Terri Hackl, who turned to backup electricity after delivering hundreds of meals throughout the day, estimate they spent at least 18 hours a day this week filling service gaps in the windswept city.

The couple is part of a network of volunteers called CrowdSource Rescue, created in 2017. Hurricane Harvey to connect first responders to people in need.

Like-minded community efforts have brought relief in the form of fresh food and fresh air to some of the millions who this week suffered without electricity. Beryl cut power to one of the country’s largest cities, putting pressure on electric utility CenterPoint Energy as outages lasted days after the Category 1 storm had passed.

While nonprofit and mutual aid organizations have honed their disaster services in a city often hit by severe weather, some now find themselves depleted by repeated deadly events. A May storm food and energy supplies were already strained by hurricane-force winds that also left electricity out.

It has been a challenge for CrowdSource Rescue to allocate generators in such need, said executive director Matthew Marchetti.

The organization only has 30, compared to the 300 it purchased after the money came in during Record winter ice in Texas in 2021. Since then, many storms have depleted resources and it is harder to get donations, he said.

“The rallying cry has been ‘Houston Strong,’” he said. “I kind of want to be ‘Houston Normal’ for a while.”

It’s difficult to heal people when shocks occur frequently, said West Street Recovery co-director Ben Hirsch. The environmental justice organization repairs homes and provides federal assistance to families in some of the most vulnerable parts of northeast Houston.

Government money to repair the damage caused by the May storm has just arrived and people haven’t had time to recover yet. Mutual aid can only contribute to alleviating systemic barriers to resilience, Hirsch said.

“Mutual aid is really good for distributing hot meals and cleaning houses,” he said. “But we need to bury our power lines and build massive flood infrastructure.”

Experts predict that the oceans’ unprecedented heat will help make this one of the busiest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record and climate change is intensifying stronger hurricanes.

Concerned that damaging hurricanes are in the pipeline so soon, Sally Ray, director of national funds at the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, said donors should “support these communities more strategically over the long term to better prepare them for what might come next.”

During times of crisis, pre-established community ties become especially important for nonprofits, which often have deeper connections to some of the hardest-hit communities, Ray said.

This includes groups like Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. About six dozen drivers deliver 2,000 hot meals daily through the Meals on Wheels program, checking in with homebound residents, said Chief Operating Officer Matthew Wright.

The nonprofit also offers people five shelf-stable meals in June ahead of hurricane season. Beryl arrived so early that Meals on Wheels plans to deliver another round soon.

Annie Jones, 62, received an emergency fund before the weekend. No longer working after breaking her hip, the Houston resident said she had just finished repairing May wind damage to her roof.

“I know this is coming,” she said of the frequent storms. “But you don’t get used to it. It’s still devastating.”

Successive extreme weather events are worrying even the most established nonprofit organizations. The Houston Food Bank, which serves 18 Southeast Texas counties through more than 1,600 community partners, is trying to collect more than 40 loads of relief supplies before hurricane season begins in June, said Brian Greene, president of the organization.

But the May storm hit while they were still stockpiling, forcing them to pull boxes from other food banks as far away as Minnesota and Tennessee. This is feasible when there is only one extreme weather event hitting the country. But he said the national Feeding America network is concerned about the increasing prevalence and severity of these scenarios.

A “disaster-level volume of supplies” — more than 400,000 pounds (181,400 kilograms) — was moved in Wednesday, Greene said, and he doesn’t want to disappoint Houston residents who have come to depend on that production.

“I worry that our ability to meet those expectations, if this happens more frequently, will be very difficult,” Greene said.

The Hackls didn’t even stop to clean up the debris covering their yard before returning to deliver food, drinks, ice and cleaning supplies on Friday.

Before leaving the independent living center the day before, Terri Hackl gave some advice on what to do with any extra supplies purchased by staff.

“Keep it,” she said. “I can almost guarantee there will be more storms this year.”

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Glenn Gamboa contributed reporting.

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