Texas deaths from Hurricane Beryl climb to at least 36 people, including more who lost power in heat

The number of Texas deaths after Hurricane Beryl came ashore and knocked out power to millions of residents climbed to at least 36 on Thursday as officials confirmed more people whose cause of death was at least partially due to heat-related causes in homes left without air conditioning.

The latest confirmed deaths were nine in Fort Bend County, including four that were at least partially attributed to hyperthermia, according to the medical examiner's office. At least a dozen other residents in the Houston area also died from causes that officials attributed to complications from the heat and losing power.

Most Houston residents had their electricity restored last week after days of widespread outages during sweltering summer temperatures.

On Thursday, CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells, the head of the city's power utility, told state regulators the company was already working to better prepare for the next storm as the governor and lawmakers have demanded answers over why electricity was out for so long.

Beryl knocked out electricity to nearly 3 million people in Texas at the height of the outages.