In Texas, a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman were killed by the storm
Howling winds and torrential rain from Tropical Storm Beryl killed at least two people on Monday, closed oil ports, grounded hundreds of flights and left more than 2 million homes and businesses in southeast Texas without power.
Beryl, the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record, has been downgraded from a hurricane after hitting the coastal city of Matagorda, Texas, with dangerous storm surges and heavy rains before moving over Houston, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The storm, which was expected to weaken rapidly as it moved inland, tore a path of destruction through Jamaica, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines last week, killing at least 12 people in the Caribbean and Texas.
In Texas, a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman were killed Monday in two incidents in the Houston area when trees fell on their homes, Harris County officials said.
The state's energy sector, the largest producer of U.S. oil and natural gas, braced for Beryl's impact as the powerful storm slowed refining operations and evacuated some production sites.
“Life-threatening storm surges and heavy rainfall are underway in parts of Texas. Damaging winds are underway along the coast, with strong winds moving inland,” the NHC said, even as Beryl began to lose strength.
After warnings were received that the storm could be deadly for communities along its path, residents rushed to board up their windows and stock up on fuel and other essentials.
Before sunrise, strong winds and torrential rain battered cities and towns including Galveston, Sargent, Lake Jackson and Freeport, according to television footage. By late morning, many fallen 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 barricaded off flooded areas.
In a video posted to social media by local Houston station ABC, firefighters using a life jacket and a ladder truck can be seen rescuing a man from a truck on a flooded stretch of highway.
At a late morning news conference, Houston Mayor John Whitmire urged people to take shelter, noting that water levels in most parts of the city were over 10 inches.
“We are literally getting calls from all over Houston right now asking for emergency responders to come and save people in desperate, life-threatening circumstances,” Whitmire said.
The storm had strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane as it crossed the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall. But the NHC said it was now expected to weaken rapidly as it moves over land, as hurricanes typically do, before becoming a tropical depression on Tuesday.
According to the NHC, Beryl is expected to move across the eastern part of the state during the day, then reach the Lower Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“People in Beryl's path should be on their guard this week,” Accuweather said in a statement, adding that tornado warnings are in effect as far away as Ohio and flash flooding is possible as far away as Detroit.
President Joe Biden is receiving regular updates on the storm and the administration is in close contact with its state and local counterparts, a White House official said.
According to the Biden administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Coast Guard had deployed personnel to assist with search and rescue efforts. FEMA had also deployed water, meals and generators to bolster the local response.
Schools said they would close as the storm approached. Airlines canceled more than 1,300 flights, and officials ordered a handful of evacuations in beach towns. Small businesses in Houston, including delivery services and chiropractors, delayed their openings or were closed Monday.
More than 2 million homes and businesses in Texas are without power, according to local utilities and data from PowerOutage.us.
Several counties in southeast Texas, including Houston, where many U.S. energy companies are headquartered, are under flash flood warnings. In some places, thunderstorms have dumped up to 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain.
Resident Gary Short said he was most concerned about possible flooding, which the NHC said was expected in parts of Texas through Monday evening.
“I'm more worried about the rain than anything else,” he said as he filled jerry cans with gasoline at a gas station Sunday. “Other than that, I'm not too worried. I'm just getting ready.”
Closures of major oil ports around Corpus Christi, Galveston and Houston in the run-up to the storm could disrupt crude oil exports, as well as deliveries of crude to refineries and motor fuel from plants.
Some oil producers, including Shell and Chevron, evacuated personnel from their offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of the storm.
Marathon Petroleum Corp.'s refinery in Texas City, Texas, was hit by a power outage Monday due to the storm, the company said in a statement.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
