Four Days Riding out the Largest Outage in History

It was in the early morning of Monday, July 8, 2024, at around 5 o’clock when I was awakened by the sound of the wind, howling with increasing crescendo as it continuously blasted the trees outside the room where my wife and I were sleeping.

I looked through the windowpane as it shook due to the combined force of the wind and the rain ruthlessly pummeling it. There was nothing I could do as Beryl brought high gusts and heavy rains. It was complete darkness outside.

Beryl, the powerful Atlantic hurricane with a devastating punch, had just landed on the Gulf Coast of Texas, packing maximum sustained winds of 80 mph and knocking out power lines, affecting Houston where my wife and I are visiting our grandchildren.

I was not scared. I grew up in the Philippines, a typhoon-prone country with approximately 20 typhoons entering the country every year. There was nothing to worry about, I said to myself. Houston, after all, is known as the “Space City” because it is home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Being the largest city in Texas, equipped with all the amenities and advanced technological know-how of a modern metropolis, I thought that Houston should be able to mitigate, if not control, any misery caused by any form of natural calamity like a hurricane.

I was mistaken.

As we drove around the following day to see the impact of the hurricane, I was surprised to see the deadly consequences caused by Beryl: downed power lines causing traffic to be redirected; trees falling on homes and garages; numerous structures with extensive damages; uprooted trees and dangling tree branches in some parks and thoroughfares; flooding in some streets and intersections; long lines of cars gassing up; reported deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning of people using generators; and crippling power shortages that, according to reports, affected more than 2.2 million people.

My wife and I – including my daughter’s family with three of our grandchildren – were among the 2.2 million who lost power not only for a day but for four consecutive days. Surviving through total darkness during a potent summer heat wave that often soared to above 90 degrees Fahrenheit was surreal.

My call to arms became “survive, we must.” We survived the first two “powerless” days with a slight inconvenience. Coping with the gradual increase in temperature inside the house was manageable. We just had to cool ourselves with Philippine-made hand fans throughout the day. With the gas stove working, we were able to cook rice and heat up whatever leftover food we had before the hurricane struck.

To relieve the boredom of not being able to watch our favorite television shows or communicate online with friends, we kept ourselves busy during the day. We played with Vinci, the family’s Golden Doodle who tends to leap playfully with whoever is around him. We completed a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle with the help of our three rumbunctious grandkids and read books we borrowed from the county library.

I started to read Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country at every opportunity. The book is about the extra-judicial killings of thousands of Filipinos during the infamous “War on Drugs” launched by Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines.

At night we had hand-held flashlights that cast a bright beam for us to do something in the dark, like taking medicine, brushing one’s teeth before going to bed, or even taking a shower.

Without air conditioning in the middle of summer, the house began to heat up on the second day. We also began to lose food in the warm fridges. We drove to China Town, where there were a few restaurants open, to eat. What a treat. That night we had “ice cream soup” (pun intended) instead of throwing pints of ice cream in the garbage.

At night it became harder to sleep. I would often wake up sweaty, a sign that the room was too hot. It was impossible to have a good rest. My wife could not sleep. Opening the room windows was of no help. My daughter in Las Vegas called to warn us about the danger of how the body feels under both heat and humidity which could be dangerous.

My son-in-law, who has an axolotl as a pet, began to worry about its ability to survive. Axolotl in an aquarium must be at a controlled temperature between 61F-64F to ensure sufficient food intake to survive. Temperature higher than 75F may lead to metabolic rate increase, causing stress and death. With no electricity, it was impossible to maintain the required temperature for the axolotl to survive. Our grandchildren who named the axolotl King Axel began to ask questions about the reality of death at a very young age.

With no end in sight when power would be restored, we decided to seek shelter at my son-in-law’s parents’ home since they got their power back. The rest is history.

Texas, like Louisiana, is a hurricane-prone state. Climate change makes hurricanes bigger and faster in the years ahead.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, as climate warms, we experience stronger winds, higher storm surges and record rainfalls during hurricane season – which is also why these storms are becoming more destructive. Stronger hurricanes are becoming more common in a warmer climate, and Houston is no exception.

According to the vice-president of CenterPoint Energy, the company responsible for restoring power, the recent hurricane that barreled into Texas and caused millions of residents to lose power was the largest in the state’s history.

We got our power restored in the evening of the fourth day of power outages. As I write this article, 750,000 more people have no power.

What a relief that we survived Beryl. But I’ve realized that when Mother Nature unleashes her wrath, we are always at her mercy. All we can do is to roll with the punches, try to help each other cope with the calamity, and figure out a way to be more prepared the next time around.