Beryl leaves millions without power in Houston: What you need to know

A day after Tropical Storm Beryl struck Houston with deadly force, flooding roads and highways and killing at least four people, authorities in Texas struggled to restore power to millions of residents as weather warmed across the region.

The storm, which made landfall in Texas around 4 a.m. Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, weakened as it moved through the sprawling city and its suburbs. But the force of its winds left Houstonians reeling for the second time in two months after a deadly system of thunderstorms ripped through the city in May.

Many trees were lost in Houston, two of which fell on homes, killing residents.

The storm had sustained winds of 65 mph as it moved through Houston, but also produced damaging hurricane-force winds of more than 80 mph in and around the city, enough to tear branches and topple trees in the city.

Two of the confirmed deaths from Monday’s storm were from trees that fell on homes, crushing people inside.

In one case, a tree fell on a home in the Atascocita area northeast of the city, killing a man who was inside with his family. He was 53, the Harris County sheriff’s office said on social media. Another person was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, local fire officials said.

The other person killed by a falling tree was a 74-year-old woman who was in her home north of downtown Houston, near Interstate 45.

The storm moved quickly, without coming to a standstill like Hurricane Harvey.

Beryl brought heavy rains to Houston. Floodwaters filled many of the city’s drainage streams to their banks, in some cases overflowing. Elsewhere, sections of highways and tunnels filled with water. Officials said at least 47 people had to be rescued from the floodwaters.

A Houston Police Department civilian employee died when he drove into a flooded tunnel near downtown, where his car was submerged. (A fourth person died in a house fire in southeast Houston that Houston Mayor John Whitmire said was “storm-related.”)

But the city was spared widespread flooding in neighborhoods. Unlike Hurricane Harvey, the 2017 storm that devastated the city, Beryl moved through Houston relatively quickly, arriving in the early morning hours and leaving the city in the afternoon.

Although the water was high in many places, it started to recede on Monday and is expected to continue to do so on Tuesday.

Millions of people were left without power and there was no information about when their power would be restored.

Once the storm passed, the biggest problem for Houstonians was widespread power outages. The main utility, CenterPoint Energy, said Monday that more than 2 million customers were without power, and officials did not immediately provide a timeline for when people could expect power to be restored.

About one in five electricity customers in Texas had lost power by Monday afternoon, with most of the outages occurring in the Houston area.

“The vast majority of us are without power,” Lina Hidalgo, Harris County judge and the county’s top elected official, said at a news conference Monday afternoon. She said about 10,000 electricians were ready to begin repairs as soon as they could do so safely, including 7,000 workers who had come from outside the Houston area to help.

CenterPoint said in a statement that customers in the hardest-hit areas should prepare for an extended period without electricity.

“This will be a multi-day restoration project,” said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the state Public Utility Commission.

The damage in the United States is nothing compared to what happened in the Caribbean.

The storm had weakened significantly from its peak in the Caribbean. Beryl formed in June and intensified into a Category 5 hurricane, the earliest such hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.

The storm killed at least 11 people on several Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, and in Venezuela.

In Carriacou and Petite Martinique, Grenada, Beryl destroyed about 98 percent of the buildings housing about 10,000 people, officials said, when it struck as a Category 4 hurricane on July 1.

The storm is weakening, but there is still a chance of tornadoes.

Beryl emerged from Texas and followed a path expected to continue into Louisiana and Arkansas, and then further north.

As the storm moved inland, it continued to weaken. But tornadoes remained a possibility. Forecasters issued tornado warnings Monday for parts of eastern Texas and Louisiana.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a news conference that “a number of tornadoes” had been reported in northeast Texas on Monday.

Judson Jones contributed to the reporting.