Hurricane Beryl is responsible for at least six deaths in Texas and one in Louisiana. As 2.3 million energy customers lose power due to the storm’s destructive path through the region, a massive cleanup and restoration effort is initiated to bring them back online.
In two different events in Harris County, Texas, trees fell on the residences of a 53-year-old male and a 74-year-old lady, respectively, according to authorities.
Three fatalities were verified by Montgomery County Emergency Management: a forty-year-old man who was operating a tractor when he was struck by a tree, and two others whose bodies were discovered in a tent in a Magnolia forested area.
Russell Richardson, 54, an information security officer, “was tragically killed by rising floodwaters after getting caught in them,” the Houston Police Department said on Monday.
Sheriff Julian Whittington reported in a Facebook message that a woman was murdered in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, northeast of Shreveport when a tree fell on her house.
Although Beryl has already been downgraded to a tropical depression, as it moved northeast on Tuesday morning, over 25 million individuals from Arkansas to Michigan were under flood watch.
The National Weather Service reported that thunderstorms with up to five inches of rain and the potential for tornadoes are probable in the storm’s path. Some of the thunderstorms are expected to be severe.
Monday saw 110 tornado warnings, the most number ever for a July day, with 67 of those being issued in Shreveport, Louisiana.
On Monday, the storm, which was a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 80 mph, made landfall in Texas, killing at least six people.
The lights went out in Sarah Glass & her husband’s living room as the storm passed overhead. She went in search of candles and flashlights while he checked the generator. Shortly after, their house in Wharton, Texas, which is located 60 miles southwest of Houston, was struck by a massive tree.
She told NBC News, “And there was a loud bang as soon as I entered the kitchen, and the ceiling had collapsed.” “Since the living room is where all that spiky wood fell from the ceiling, we would have most likely been killed when we moved out.”
1.8 million customers of CenterPoint Energy, the primary supplier for the Houston region, were among the 12% of Texas’ 13.8 million customers who were without power on Tuesday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.
More than a million connections have been restored in the last 24 hours, according to the business, and another million will be restored by Wednesday night. However, its workers are having difficulty reaching some locations due to high water after more than a foot of rain poured in the previous 24 hours.
Power lines around the Greater Houston area have been brought down by falling trees and severe winds; the business indicated that because of the storm’s somewhat different path, the impact has been worse than anticipated.
Eva Costancio, who lives in the Rosenberg suburb of Houston, looked at a big tree that had fallen across power wires and remarked, “We haven’t really slept.” After going several hours without power, Costancio told The Associated Press she was afraid the food in her refrigerator might go bad.
“We are having trouble getting food, and it would be hard to lose that food,” she remarked.
On Monday, social media users shared videos of intense thunderstorms in St. Louis, Missouri; flooding in Bryant, Arkansas; and torrential rain in Houston.