The number of heat-related deaths in Texas is rising among residents who lost power during Hurricane Beryl.
As the temperature soared in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shared with her sister after losing electricity in Hurricane Beryl, she did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sibling cool.But on their fourth day without power, she awoke to hear Pamela Jarrett, who used a wheelchair and relied on a feeding tube, gasping for breath. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at the hospital, with the medical examiner saying her death was caused by the heat.
The combination of searing summer heat and residents unable to power up air conditioning in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions for some in America’s fourth-largest city. 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.
Officials are still working to determine if some deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm-related. But even when those numbers come in, getting a clear picture of the storm's toll could take much more time. Experts say that while a count of storm-related fatalities compiled from death certificates is useful, an analysis of excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm can give a more complete picture of the toll. For that, researchers compare the number of people who died in that period to how many would have been expected to die under normal conditions.
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