Heat-related deaths rise in Texas after power outages during storm Beryl

Nearly two weeks after Beryl struck, heat-related deaths during extended power outages have raised the storm-related death toll to at least 23 in Texas.

The combination of scorching summer heat and residents’ inability to turn on their air conditioning in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions for some in the fourth-largest U.S. city.

Beryl knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted for days or longer, and hospitals reported a surge in heat-related illnesses.

Power was finally restored to most last week after more than a week of widespread outages. The slowdown in the Houston area put the region’s electricity provider, CenterPoint Energy, under increasing scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared.

While it may be weeks or even years before the storm’s full human toll in Texas is known, understanding that number helps with planning for the future, experts say.

What is known so far about the deaths?
Just after the storm hit, bringing high winds and flooding, deaths included people killed by falling trees and people who drowned when their vehicles became submerged in floodwaters.

In the days after the storm passed, deaths included people who fell while cutting branches from damaged trees and heat-related deaths.

Half of the deaths attributed to the storm in Harris County, where Houston is located, were heat-related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

When will the total number of deaths be known?
As power outages and clean-up efforts continue, the death toll is likely to continue to rise.

Officials are still working to determine whether some deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm-related. But even when those numbers are known, getting a clear picture of the storm’s toll could take much longer.

Lara Anton, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, estimated it may not be until late July before they have even a preliminary count.

In the state’s vital statistics system, there is a message to indicate whether a death was storm-related and medical certifiers are asked to submit additional information about how the death was related to the storm, Anton said.

Experts say that while a tally of storm-related deaths compiled from death certificates is useful, an analysis of excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm can provide a more complete picture of the toll. To do so, researchers compare the number of people who died in that period to the number who would have been expected to die under normal conditions.

What do the different numbers tell us?
Both the approach of counting death certificates and calculating excess deaths have their own benefits when it comes to storms, said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Center for Climate and Health at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

Excess death analysis provides a better estimate of the total number of people killed, making it useful for public health and emergency management planning, as well as assessing the impact of climate change, he said.

But “it doesn’t say who,” he said, and understanding the individual circumstances of storm deaths is important to help show what puts people at risk.

“If I just tell you that 200 people died, it doesn’t tell you the story of what went wrong for these people, which teaches us something about what we can hopefully do better to prepare or help people prepare in the future,” Wellenius said.