Power restored to most affected by deadly Houston storm, with the rest by Wednesday

HOUSTON– Houston residents hit by deadly storms last week received good news when officials said power had been restored Sunday to a majority of the hundreds of thousands left in the dark and without air conditioning amid hot and humid weather.

The widespread destruction from Thursday’s storms left at least seven dead and brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds swept through the city, turning businesses and other structures into piles of rubble, uprooting trees and shattering glass from downtown skyscrapers. A tornado also touched down near Cypress, a northwest Houston suburb.

By Sunday evening, power had been restored to 88% of customers in the Houston area, said Paul Lock, a spokesman for CenterPoint Energy.

“We expect everyone to be back to work on Wednesday,” Lock said.

More than 289,000 homes and businesses in Texas were without electricity Sunday evening, mostly in the Houston area. More than 3,900 customers were without power in Louisiana, which was also hit by high winds and a suspected tornado.

CenterPoint Energy said 2,000 employees and more than 5,000 contractors were working in the Houston area to restore power.

“We understand that the warmer temperatures we are experiencing in Houston and surrounding communities make it even more important to turn the lights and air conditioning back on,” Lynnae Wilson, CenterPoint’s senior vice president of electrical business, said in a statement.

At one of the five cooling centers for people who do not yet have power in their homes, residents took shelter from the heat in a community center in the Klaverbladbuurt and wondered when they would get power again.

Carolina Sierra and her six-year-old son Derek enjoyed the air conditioning for a few hours on Sunday. She said they have been without electricity since the storm hit Thursday, and their home was stifling.

Derek passed the time coloring a picture of a dragon while his mother charged her cell phone and a portable lamp they planned to use Sunday evening if the power still hadn’t been restored. Sierra said she gives her son multiple baths to keep him cool, but he tosses and turns at night and has trouble falling asleep.

“We are desperate,” Sierra said. “We hardly sleep at night because of the heat.”

Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia stood outside the center Sunday helping load water and ice onto vehicles while offering words of encouragement to residents still waiting for power to be restored.

“We are seeing some of the recovery coming through,” Garcia said. “But we can’t see enough of it fast enough.”

Disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and loans from the Small Business Administration were on the way, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county where Houston is located. The federal aid, which can help pay for temporary housing and repairs, will help residents affected by last week’s storms and by flooding caused by heavy rains in late April and early May in parts of Houston, Harris County and several counties north of Houston.

Mayor John Whitmire said a six-block area in downtown Houston would be closed Monday so crews could continue repairs after the windows of several high-rise buildings were blown out.

Residents erupted in cheers when the lights and air conditioning came on in the eight-story Houston Heights Tower, a senior living facility, Sunday morning. The nearly 200 residents had been living on backup power since Thursday evening, with generators providing enough electricity to run just one of the building’s elevators and a handful of fans in the common area, leaving the apartments in darkness.

Volunteers and city workers ensured residents had a steady supply of water, food and basic necessities such as toilet paper.

“It just shows you how people come together,” said resident Joseph Torregrossa, choking back tears.

The National Weather Service said in a post on the social platform X that residents can expect “sunny, warm and increasingly humid days” in the Houston area. Highs of around 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) were expected this week, while heat indexes were likely to approach 102 degrees (39 degrees Celsius) by mid-week.

With a temperature of 33 degrees Celsius on Sunday afternoon, Lisa Reed sat in a folding chair outside her home in the Klaverbladbuurt because she was still without electricity. A volunteer crew had just cut down a large tree in her front yard that had fallen on two vehicles in her driveway and neatly stacked the wood into two large piles.

Reed said not a single house on her street — where branches and other debris were piled along the sidewalk — escaped damage from last week’s storms.

“I can’t help it,” said Reed, a fifth-grade teacher. “Take it all in stride. I firmly believe that God will work it all out.”

School districts in the Houston area canceled classes for more than 400,000 students on Friday. The Houston Independent School District, the state’s largest, said 215 of its 274 campuses would be open Monday. Two other major school districts in the Houston area — Cypress-Fairbanks and Spring Branch — would be closed.

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Associated Press reporter Mark Vancleave contributed to this report.

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