Heat-related Texas deaths climb after Beryl left millions without power for days or longer

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SPRING, Texas (AP) — As temperatures soared in the Houston-area home where Janet Garrett lives with her sister after Hurricane Beryl knocked out power, she did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sister cool.

But on the fourth day of the power outage, she woke up to hear Pamela Jarrett, who was in a wheelchair and on a feeding tube, gasping for air. Paramedics were called, but she was pronounced dead at the hospital, where the coroner said her death was caused by heat.

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“It’s so hard to know that she’s gone now because this was never supposed to happen to her,” Janet Jarrett said.

Nearly two weeks after Beryl struck, heat-related deaths during prolonged power outages brought the storm-related death toll to at least 23 in Texas.

The combination of scorching summer heat and residents’ inability to turn on air conditioners in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 led to increasingly dangerous conditions for some in the fourth-largest city in the United States.

Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted for days or longer, and hospitals reported a rise in heat-related illnesses.

Power finally returned to most areas last week, after widespread outages that lasted more than a week. The slow pace of power in the Houston area has put CenterPoint Energy, the area’s electricity provider, under increasing scrutiny over whether it was adequately prepared.

Although it may take weeks or even years before the full death toll from the storm in Texas is known, understanding the number helps in planning for the future, experts say.

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What do we know about the deaths so far?

Immediately after the storm hit, bringing high winds and flooding, deaths included people killed by falling trees and people drowning when floodwaters swept away their cars. In the days after the storm, deaths included people falling while cutting damaged tree branches 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 Science.

Jarrett, who has cared for her sister since she was injured in an attack six years ago, said her “sassy” sister did everything from owning a vintage store in Harlem, New York, to working as an artist.

“She had a great personality,” Garrett said, adding that her sister was in good health before the power went out at their Spring home.

When will the full death toll be known?

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

Officials are still working to determine whether some of the deaths that have already occurred should be considered caused by the storm. But even when those numbers come in, it could take much longer to get a clear picture of the storm’s death toll.

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Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to determine storm-related deaths, said they may not even have a preliminary count until the end of July.

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

Experts say that while storm-related death counts from death certificates are useful, analyzing excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm can give a more complete picture of the toll. For this reason, researchers compare the number of people who died during that period with the number of people who would have been expected to die under normal circumstances.

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

What do the different fee numbers tell us?

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

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He added that the analysis of excess deaths gives 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.

But he said, “It doesn’t tell you who,” and understanding the individual circumstances of storm deaths is important in helping to show what puts individual people at risk.

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

Stengel reported from Dallas, and Sean Murphy contributed reporting from Oklahoma City.

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