Beryl Power Outages Force 17 Texas Hospitals to Use Generators

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to date on the most essential Texas news.

Power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl in Houston and southeast Texas forced health care providers to dramatically change course Wednesday as they were forced to keep patients out longer instead of sending them back to homes without power, baking in the summer heat.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick addressed the situation at a news conference, noting how Houston officials have transformed the NRG Arena, one of the event spaces used by the city’s annual rodeo and livestock show, into a field hospital that can accommodate 250 discharged patients to free up space at local hospitals. He said it’s necessary because several area hospitals are struggling to accommodate new patients.

Some patients have had their discharge delayed because medications need to be stored in a cool place.

“We actually had a police officer who was shot in the leg, and when the mayor went to see him the next day, he still didn’t have a room,” said Patrick, who is serving this week as acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is in Taiwan on a trade trip.

Also Wednesday, Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd said the hospital overcrowding had also caused problems for 911 services, as regional ambulances could not drop off patients until a room was available.

“The city of Houston told us they were short on ambulances because all of their ambulances were in the emergency room waiting to unload patients,” Kidd said. “Some had been there for over three hours.”

TDEM sent 25 additional ambulances to Houston this week and worked with local emergency departments and hospitals to address the backlog of 911 calls.

Kidd said hospitals, doctors and patients will decide who goes to NRG Arena. Any regional hospital can send a patient to the arena.

According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, at least 17 Texas hospitals are still running on generators after Beryl made landfall Monday. The agency did not release the locations or names of those hospitals.

Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Texas Hospital Association, said the “vast majority” of hospitals in Southeast Texas are facing some form of post-Beryl challenge, such as water or wind damage, power or connectivity outages, staffing shortages or transportation issues.

“Our biggest concern is the subset of hospitals that are running on backup generators or have no connection,” she said. “About 20% of hospitals in Southeast Texas are using backup generators for their power and others have connection issues.”

These connectivity issues make it difficult for hospital staff to access medical records or order tests.

“We know these hospitals are a priority for service restoration. We are grateful for that, and restoration cannot come soon enough,” she said.

The hospital association released a list of recommendations for patients who need power for oxygen machines or dialysis, advising them to first seek cooling centers before going to the emergency room.

In Livingston, residents seek cooling stations

In Livingston, about 70 miles northeast of Houston, the stress of figuring out where to go for relief from the heat, especially for those with compromised health conditions, prompted Marissa Suski, 36, to drive her 56-year-old husband, Brian, to the Polk County Commerce Center, where a cooling station was set up Wednesday morning.

Concerns about his heart condition intensified after Beryl’s walk across Texas. Only 35 percent of his heart is functioning after a heart attack in November that left him hospitalized for several days.

The couple saw their elderly neighbors, one of whom also has heart problems, waiting hours for medical attention Tuesday and decided they didn’t want to take a chance. They started looking for a cooling station and heard about the mall from a few county workers outside the city’s emergency management office.

“I’m sitting here trying to figure out how Onalaska got power and we didn’t,” said Marissa Suski, referring to the small town of 3,000 northwest of Livingston. “You would think that since we have the only hospital for a while, they would try to get us power first. Because right now, they’re just running on generators.”

On Wednesday, St. Luke’s Health-Memorial Hospital in Polk County was open and providing care. However, due to power outages, it was running on a generator.

“Our teams are dedicated to providing care and comfort to our patients and guests during this emergency,” said Scott Packard, a hospital spokesman.

Kari Miller, assistant to Polk County Judge Sydney Murphy, said the cooling stations in Polk County were installed in part to alleviate health concerns.

At the mall where the Suski family was cooling off, Polk County has set up a nighttime area to help residents who rely on oxygen tanks to stay. They have also started screening people with other conditions to see if they could benefit from overnight assistance.

“We’re not a hospital, so there’s not much we can do,” Miller said. “But if someone needs oxygen, they’re welcome to come here.”

Marissa Suski worries about what they will do at night after the cooling center closes if they are not allowed to stay there. Her husband is having trouble breathing because of the heat.

The couple are among thousands of people in East Texas struggling to find a way to stay medically safe after Hurricane Beryl struck several counties, knocking out power. Power companies and elected officials said it could be days before electricity is restored.

As of Wednesday morning, most electric customers in coastal Brazoria County, most of Polk, San Jacinto and Trinity counties and a significant portion of Harris County, the state’s most populous, remained without power.

CenterPoint, which maintains the power lines and cables that power Houston and the surrounding area, said in a news release Monday that the storm had a greater impact on the company’s infrastructure than expected based on earlier projections of the storm’s path. The statement drew anger from Texans and lawmakers.

“CenterPoint’s inadequate efforts to restore power are putting people with serious medical conditions at risk, as evidenced by the fact that hospitals are now unable to send patients home where they lack power for medical equipment or an environment cool enough for their condition,” U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday.

A Galveston County woman has already died because her oxygen machine ran out of battery, county medical examiner investigator John Florence said Tuesday.

Jess Huff, Pooja Salhotra and John Jordan contributed to this article.

Disclosure: The Texas Hospital Association is a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Funders play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a full list of donors here.

Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; President and CEO of NPR Katherine Maher; Representative of the United States Pete AguilarD-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will be performing at the Texas Tribune Festival, September 5-7, in downtown Austin. Get your tickets today!