Tropical Storm Beryl brought howling winds and torrential rains to southeast Texas on Monday, killing at least three people, flooding roads, closing oil ports, canceling more than 1,300 flights and knocking out power to more than 2.7 million homes and businesses.
Beryl, the earliest Category 5 hurricane of the season on record, weakened after lashing the coastal Texas city of Matagorda with dangerous storm surge and heavy rain before moving through Houston, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. The agency said the conditions could spawn tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.
The storm, which was expected to weaken rapidly as it moved inland, carved a destructive path through Jamaica, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines last week. It killed at least 11 people in Mexico and the Caribbean and before reaching Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters.
In Texas, a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman were killed in two incidents caused by trees falling on their homes in the Houston area on Monday. A third person, a Houston city employee on his way to work, drowned in an underpass, Patrick said.
Oil refining activity has slowed and some production sites have been evacuated in the state that is the country's largest producer of oil and natural gas.
“For those in Northeast Texas, please be cautious. There will be tropical storm force winds, perhaps until midnight or 1 a.m. There will be flooding, there will be rain and you should stay off the roads,” Patrick said.
State officials have not yet assessed the economic damage as they continue to work to rescue the high winds. Restoring power will take several days, said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
More than 2,500 first responders were deployed across the state, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
Following warnings that it could be a deadly storm for communities in its path, people rushed to board up windows and stock up on fuel and other essential supplies.
Before dawn, strong wind gusts and torrential rains battered cities and towns including Galveston, Sargent, Lake Jackson and Freeport, television video showed. By late morning, many downed trees blocked roads in Houston as the worst of the storm passed, with persistent winds and some road flooding leaving lanes of major highways impassable. The city set up barricades in flooded areas.
A fire truck with life jackets and a ladder rescued a man from a truck on a flooded stretch of highway, video posted on social media by local Houston station ABC showed. Patrick said there were other rescues.
Flood waters topped 10 inches (25 cm) in much of Houston, Mayor John Whitmire said.
“We're literally getting calls all over Houston right now asking for emergency services to come rescue people in desperate safety conditions,” Whitmire said.
The storm had strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall, but the NHC said it was expected to weaken into a tropical depression overnight and a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday.
That was enough to trigger more heavy rain as it moved northeastward from eastern Texas on Monday afternoon, across Arkansas on Tuesday and into the lower Ohio Valley on Tuesday.
evening and eventually reaching the Lower Great Lakes on Wednesday, the U.S. National Weather Service said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Coast Guard had sent personnel to help with search and rescue efforts. FEMA also prepared water, food and generators to boost local response efforts, according to the Biden administration.
Schools said they would close as the storm approached. Airlines canceled more than 1,300 flights and authorities ordered some evacuations in coastal cities. Small businesses in Houston, including package delivery services and chiropractors, delayed their openings or closed Monday.
More than 2.7 million homes and businesses in Texas were without power, according to Patrick and PowerOutage.us.
Several counties in southeastern Texas, including Houston, where many U.S. energy companies are based, are under flash flood warnings as thunderstorms unleashed up to nearly 12 inches (30 cm) of rain in some areas.
The closure of major oil shipping ports in Corpus Christi, Galveston and Houston ahead of the storm could disrupt crude exports, along with shipments of crude to refineries and motor fuel from the plants. The Corpus Christi ship channel has reopened, while the Port of Houston is projected to resume operations Tuesday afternoon.
Some oil producers, including Shell SHEL.L and Chevron CVX.N, evacuated staff from their offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of the storm.
Marathon Petroleum Corp's MPC.N refinery in Texas City, Texas, was hit by a power outage on Monday amid the storm, the company said in a statement.
