Storm Beryl kills 2, knocks out power as it spreads across Texas

Howling winds and torrential rain from Tropical Storm Beryl killed at least two people, closed oil ports, grounded hundreds of flights and knocked out power to more than 2 million homes and businesses in Southeast Texas on Monday.

Beryl, the season’s first Category 5 hurricane on record, weakened after hitting the coastal city of Matagorda, Texas, with dangerous storm surge and heavy rain before moving through Houston, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

The storm, which was expected to weaken quickly as it moved inland, swept a destructive path through Jamaica, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines last week. It killed at least 12 people in the Caribbean and Texas.

In Texas, a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman were killed in two incidents when trees fell on their Houston-area homes on Monday, according to Harris County authorities.

The energy industry in the state, the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the US, braced for Beryl’s impact as the powerful storm slowed refining activity and led to the evacuation of some production sites.

“Life-threatening storms and heavy rainfall are occurring in parts of Texas. Damaging winds continue along the coast, with strong winds moving inland,” the NHC said, even as Beryl began to lose strength.

After warnings that it could be a deadly storm for communities in its path, residents rushed to board up their windows and stock up on fuel and other essentials.

Before dawn, strong gusts and torrential rain lashed cities and towns including Galveston, Sargent, Lake Jackson and Freeport, television footage showed. By late morning, many downed trees blocked roads in Houston as the worst of the storm passed, with persistent winds and some road flooding, making major highway lanes impassable. The city barricaded flooded areas.

In a video posted to social media by Houston’s local ABC station, crews wearing life jackets and a fire truck rescued a man from a truck on a flooded stretch of highway.

At a late-morning news conference, Houston Mayor John Whitmire urged people to shelter in place. He noted that flood waters exceeded 25 cm in most parts of the city.

“We are literally getting calls in Houston right now asking for first responders to come rescue individuals in desperate life safety conditions,” Whitmire said.

The storm became a Category 1 hurricane as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall. But the NHC said it is now expected to weaken rapidly as it moves over land, as hurricanes typically do, before becoming a tropical depression on Tuesday.

Beryl was expected to roam eastern parts of the state during the day before moving into the Lower Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday, the NHC said.

“People in the path of Beryl’s trail should not let their guard down this week,” Accuweather said in a statement, warning of possible tornadoes as far away as Ohio and possible flash flooding as far north as Detroit.

President Joe Biden is regularly updated on the storm, while administration officials remain in close contact with their state and local counterparts, a White House official said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Coast Guard have pre-positioned personnel to assist with search and rescue efforts, with FEMA also prepared with water, meals and generators to boost local response efforts, according to with the Biden administration.

Schools said they would close as the storm approached. Airlines canceled more than 1,300 flights and authorities ordered a series of evacuations in coastal cities. Small businesses in Houston, including package delivery services and chiropractors, delayed openings or closed on Monday.

More than 2 million homes and businesses in Texas lost power, according to local utilities and data from PowerOutage.us.

Several counties in southeast Texas — including Houston, where many U.S. energy companies are headquartered — are under flood warnings as storms dumped up to a foot of rain in some areas.

Resident Gary Short said he was most concerned about possible flooding, which the NHC warned was expected in parts of Texas through Monday night.

“I’m more worried about the rain than anything else,” he said as he filled gas cans at a gas station on Sunday. “Other than that, I’m not too worried. Just getting ready.”

The closure of major oil shipping ports around Corpus Christi, Galveston and Houston ahead of the storm could disrupt crude oil exports, along with shipments of crude oil to refineries and motor fuel from factories.

Some oil producers, including Shell and Chevron, evacuated personnel from their offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of the storm.

Marathon Petroleum Corp’s refinery in Texas City, Texas, was hit by a power outage Monday amid the storm, the company said in a statement.

(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)