AP: Houston keeps buckling under storms like Beryl. The fixes aren't coming fast enough

[OKIsItJustMe]

Houston keeps buckling under storms like Beryl. The fixes aren’t coming fast enough

BY MELINA WALLING AND JUAN A. LOZANO
Updated 2:11 PM EDT, July 11, 2024

HOUSTON (AP) — Sharon Carr is frustrated. Like many others who lost power after Hurricane Beryl slammed into the Texas coast earlier this week, she went to a cooling center in Houston to get relief from summer heat while the city’s utility company warned that restoring everyone’s electricity could take longer than they might hope.

“There’s too much wind, we don’t have power. It’s raining a long time, we don’t have power,” said Carr, who also went without electricity for a week in May when a destructive storm known as a derecho swept through the area.

Carr, who works for the city’s transportation and drainage department, thinks more could be done to keep the lights on — or at least restore them more quickly — if Houston and other urban areas prone to severe weather would stop focusing on immediate problems and look at the bigger picture, including climate change.

“This shouldn’t keep happening,” she said. “If it’s broke, let’s fix it.”

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