Anger mounts in southeast Texas as crippling power outages and heat turn deadly

(CNN) — Frustrations are mounting across southeast Texas as residents enter a fourth day of crippling power outages and heat , a combination that has proven dangerous – and at times deadly – as some struggle to access food, gas and medical care.

Nearly 1.3 million homes and businesses across the region are still without power after Beryl slammed into the Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Monday, leaving at least 11 people dead across Texas and Louisiana. The storm continues to threaten flooding Thursday in New England.

Many residents are sheltering with friends or family who have power, but some can’t afford to leave their homes, Houston City Councilman Julian Ramirez told CNN. And while countless families have lost food in their warming fridges, many stores are still closed, leaving government offices, food banks and other public services scrambling to distribute food to underserved areas, he said.

As residents desperately try to cool their homes with generators, carbon monoxide poisoning has become a serious concern. At least two people have died in Harris County from carbon monoxide poisoning and fire departments have received more than 200 carbon monoxide poisoning calls in 24 hours, local officials said.

Beyond that, a 71-year-old woman died near Crystal Beach after her oxygen machine ran out of battery power and her generator shut down.

“If you’re wondering if someone is OK, if you think they have the medically necessary equipment that has a battery that needs to be charged, don’t risk it,” Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton said. “And call 911, please.”

Heat-related medical emergencies are also spiking in Houston, as 90-degree temperatures blanket southeast Texas, Fire Chief Samuel Peña said. The heat index – a measurement of how the body feels under both heat and humidity – could reach 106 degrees in some areas, a life-threatening scenario for people without adequate cooling.

The dangerous heat – driven by human-caused climate change – hasn’t been limited to Texas. At least 28 heat-related deaths in the West have been reported since July 1, as a record-breaking heat wave beats down on states including California, Oregon and Arizona.

In Texas, a family in Needville, about 40 miles southwest of Houston, gave in and bought a window air conditioning unit on Wednesday after three days of sweltering heat. Jennifer Purswell said she has plugged the unit into a generator and is using plastic sheets draped over doorways to trap cool air in the living room.

Essential operations, including hospitals and senior living homes, have been prioritizing powering medically necessary equipment. Some Houston hospitals are at risk of overcrowding as they cannot release patients to homes without power, prompting city officials to organize overflow beds in an indoor sports stadium, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Tuesday.

Nine fire stations in Houston have closed and relocated because they did not have generators, Peña said, even as emergency calls flood in.

Animal rescue teams and pet owners have also been working overtime to protect fuzzy companions. Pug Hearts Houston owner Cindy Rothermel said she heard of pug owners sitting in their cars with the A/C running to cool the dogs down in “intolerable” heat.

Texans losing patience with utility company

As miserable conditions persist, Houston area residents are growing increasingly frustrated with CenterPoint Energy, the city’s primary utility company that is responsible for restoring the vast majority of outages – and anger is spreading among those who say the utility should have been more prepared for the storm.

“Almost universally people have lost patience with CenterPoint,” Ramirez, the councilman, told CNN. He pointed out new street art in Houston – a graffiti tag on Interstate 10 that says “Centerpointle$$.”

Beryl’s impact left more than 2.2 million customers without electricity on Monday. By Wednesday night, CenterPoint said it had restored power to 1.1 million customers and hoped to have an additional 400,000 restored by Friday and 350,000 more by Sunday.

More than 1 million CenterPoint customers remain without power, as of Thursday afternoon.

“CenterPoint can’t seem to tell us how long this is going to last. The first outage we experienced (in May), I was out of power four to five days, and I think that was pretty common,” Ramirez said. “This one, who knows? Could be longer. They’re not telling us.”

The Harris County Republican Party also criticized CenterPoint in a social media post for its “seemingly lack of preparedness.”

“CenterPoint is the number one provider of power for Harris County residents and must do better. They owe us answers,” the post read.

The utility said Thursday morning it would begin providing estimated restoration times on its status tracker. CenterPoint Vice President of Operations Darin Carroll told CNN affiliate KHOU the pace of repairs will begin to slow as the community moves deeper into disaster recovery.

Additionally, Carroll told the station the utility aimed to improve the accuracy of its power outage map , which has been criticized by residents across social media for having inaccuracies, indcluding saying power is restored where it is not.

“We’re working on the accuracy right now,” Carroll said. “We track it constantly. We’re making adjustments to the map as we speak.”

The City Council grilled a CenterPoint executive on Wednesday, asking why the company hasn’t done more to prepare for storms.

Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint vice president of electric distribution and power delivery, said they’ve never seen an incident to this magnitude and described it as the “largest outage in our history.”

“We have made solid progress and exceeded the number of customer restorations following Hurricane Ike, but we have a lot of important work ahead, especially in the hardest-hit areas where the work will be more complex and time-consuming,” a utility spokesperson said, referring to a deadly Category 2 hurricane that left millions without power in 2008.

Three months before Hurricane Beryl hit Texas, CenterPoint Energy estimated it would need $2 billion to harden its system against worsening extreme weather.

The company reported it needed to restore power after 15 extreme weather events between 2019 to 2023. The longest restoration time to date was after the deadly winter storm and brutal cold snap in February 2021, when it took 116 hours and 40 minutes to restore power to more than 8 million impacted customers.

Much of Texas’s electrical infrastructure was built in the 1970s and 1980s, when weather was less extreme, Joshua Rhodes, an energy research scientist at UT Austin, told CNN. The string of storms Texas has been hit with in recent years is now taking a toll.

“It’s not a surprise the infrastructure built for milder weather is failing more often,” Rhodes said.

Elder care facilities struggle without power

Senior care facilities and residents who rely on electric medical devices are particularly at risk as power outages stretch through at least the end of the week.

Ian Wu, an owner of the Ella Springs assisted senior living facility in the Houston area, said he has been fielding concerns from families as his 85 residents remain in the dark – some without power for oxygen machines.

The facility is registered as a critical load customer for which service is considered crucial, but he has no clarity on when their power will be restored, Wu told CNN affiliate KTRK .

Patricia Romano, who moved her 92-year-old mother to her home, called the situation “ridiculous.”

“Don’t we owe it to our people who can’t take care of themselves to take care of them?” Romano told the affiliate.

Storm brought tornadoes, flooding to Northeast

The National Weather Service in Buffalo, New York, confirmed two tornadoes in the area Wednesday, as the remnants of Beryl tracked across the state.

The local weather service issued nine tornado warnings Wednesday –- the most ever put out in a single day.

Flash flood warnings were in effect Thursday morning from northern New York to central Maine, with early morning flash flooding ­­in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Flood watches remain for northern New York and much of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine until Thursday afternoon – but as the system continues to move east-northeast, the bulk of the storm’s impacts are expected to be over for most of New England.

CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Brad Parks, Ella Nilson, Amanda Jackson, Robert Shackelford, Joe Sutton and Sarah Dewberry contributed to this report.

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