Texas energy provider under increased scrutiny amid heat-related deaths
As temperatures soared in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shares with her sister after the power went out Hurricane BerylShe did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sister calm.
But on the fourth day without power, she woke to hear Pamela Jarrett, who used a wheelchair and was dependent on a feeding tube, gasping for air. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at hospital, with the medical examiner saying her death was due to heatstroke.
“It’s hard to know she’s gone right now because this wasn’t supposed to happen to her,” Janet Jarrett said.
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, heat-related deaths during prolonged power outages have pushed the storm’s death toll to at least 23 in Texas.
The combination of the scorching heat of summer and the residents can not turn on air conditioner In the days after the Category 1 hurricane made landfall on July 8, conditions have become increasingly dangerous for some residents of the fourth-largest city in the United States.
Beryl knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the peak of the outage, lasting days or longer, and hospitals reported a spike in heat-related illnesses.
Power was finally restored to most people last week, after more than a week of widespread outages. The slow pace in the Houston area has left the area’s power provider, CenterPoint Energy, is being closely monitored on whether it was fully prepared.
Meanwhile maybe a few weeks or even years before the full human toll from the Texas hurricane was known, understand that number Experts say it helps plan for the future.
What is known about the death toll so far?
Immediately after the storm hit, bringing high winds and flooding, the death toll included people being crushed by falling trees and people drowning when their cars were submerged in floodwaters. In the days after the storm, the death toll included people falling while cutting damaged tree branches and people dying from the heat.
Half of the storm deaths in Harris County, home to Houston, were heat-related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
Jarrett, who has cared for her sister since she was injured in an attack six years ago, said her “brash” sister has done everything from owning an antiques store in Harlem, New York, to working as an artist.
“She had a great personality,” Jarrett said, adding that her sister was in good health before their Spring home lost power.
When will the total number of deaths be known?
With power outages and cleanup efforts still ongoing, the death toll is likely to continue to rise.
Officials are still working to determine whether some of the deaths that have occurred should be considered storm-related. But even once those numbers emerge, getting a clear picture of the storm’s damage could take longer.
Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to determine storm-related deaths, estimated it could be the end of July before they have a preliminary tally.
There is a prompt in the state’s vital statistics system that states whether the death was storm-related and the medical examiner is asked to submit additional information about how the death was storm-related, Anton said.
Experts say that while hurricane-related death data compiled from death certificates is useful, analyzing excess deaths that occurred during and after a storm can provide a more complete picture of the toll. To do that, researchers compare the number of deaths during that period to the number that would have been expected under normal conditions.
Analyzing excess deaths helps count deaths that might otherwise have been missed, said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.
What do the different toll numbers tell us?
Both death certificate counting and death counting have their benefits when it comes to hurricanes, said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Center for Climate and Health at Boston University’s School of Public Health.
Analyzing excess deaths will provide a better estimate of the total number of deaths, he said, and is therefore useful for public health and emergency management planning in addition to assessing the impact of climate change.
But “it doesn’t tell you who it is,” he said, and understanding the individual circumstances of those who died from the storm is important to help pinpoint what puts some people at risk.
“If I just tell you that 200 people died, that doesn’t tell you what happened to those people, that teaches us something about what we can hopefully do better to prepare or help people prepare in the future,” Wellenius said.
