In Sugar Land, a grandmother and three children on Tuesday were found dead after a house fire. Investigators told KHOU the cause of the fire was under investigation, but the family had been using their fireplace during power outages to try to keep warm.
In Houston, police said, a man whose body was found in a street median was believed to have died from exposure to the cold temperatures. Another 60-year-old man was found dead inside a van possibly from exposure.
Another man was killed on Monday after he was hit by a car on Interstate 10; he had just gotten out of his vehicle following a crash on the icy roads.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office also told KSAT the death of a 78-year-old man, whose body was found in his home by his wife on Monday, may have been due to the extreme cold.
The number of fatalities related to the storm and cold temperatures may continue to rise.
In Galveston County, the medical examiner’s office had requested on Tuesday a refrigerated truck to handle a surge of deaths as the county braces for even more icy rain, according to ABC 13.
It was unclear if that was directly connected to the storm, but Galveston County Judge Mark Henry told the local news station that the medical examiner’s office needed to suddenly increase its capacity to hold an additional 20 to 50 bodies.
The county medical examiner’s office also handles cases from neighboring Brazoria County.
On Tuesday, Henry blasted the state’s electrical power grid, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), for the blackouts. In his county, most of the more than 340,000 residents have been without power for at least two days.
The county was told Sunday to prepare for rolling blackouts, but Henry said the situation had worsened since then.
Source Article from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/deaths-texas-storm-ercot-power
Comments