SPRING, Texas (NEWSnet/AP) — Two weeks after Beryl hit Texas, heat-related deaths during prolonged power outages have pushed the number of storm-related fatalities in the state to at least 23.

A combination of searing heat and residents unable to use air conditioning after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions.

Beryl cut electricity to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which continued for several days. Hospitals reported a spike in heat-related illness.

Most deaths early in the storm included people killed by falling trees and people who drowned when their vehicles became submerged in floodwater. In the days after, deaths included people who fell while cutting limbs on damaged trees and heat-related incidents.

Half of the deaths attributed to the storm in Harris County, where Houston is located, were heat-related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

Officials are still working to determine if some deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm-related. Lara Anton, a spokesperson for Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, estimates it may not be until the end of July before there is a preliminary count.

Experts say that, although a count of storm-related fatalities compiled from death certificates is useful, an analysis of excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm can provide a more complete picture. For that, researchers compare the number of people who died in that period to how many would be expected to die in typical conditions.

Excess-death analysis helps count deaths that might have been overlooked, said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

Both the approach of counting the death certificates and calculating excess deaths have a benefit, said Gregory Wellenius, director of Boston University School of Public Health's Center for Climate and Health.

Excess-death analysis gives a better estimate of the total number of people killed.

But it doesn't tell you “who," he said. Understanding individual circumstances of storm deaths is important in helping to show what puts people at risk.

“If I just tell you 200 people died, it doesn't tell you that story of what went wrong for these people, which teaches us something about what hopefully can we do better to prepare or help people prepare in the future,” Wellenius said.

Follow NEWSnet on Facebook and X platform to get our headlines in your social feeds.

Copyright 2024 NEWSnet and The Associated Press. All rights reserved.