This story was co-published in partnership with Public Health Watch. 

Sandra Edwards awoke on the morning of July 8 to the sounds of howling winds and gushing water. As she made her way from the bedroom to the living room, she stepped in a puddle. She turned on her phone’s flashlight and saw a hole in the roof, wooly insulation hanging off the ceiling and water pouring in. Hurricane Beryl had just made landfall in Houston. 

In a panic, Edwards, 58, called her insurance company to report the damage. The woman who answered the phone tried to reassure her, but she was inconsolable. The 100-year-old house Edwards inherited from her parents had sustained significant damage from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 (she had to live in her car for months) and a band of intense thunderstorms known as a derecho earlier this year. After all the repairs, it was unlivable yet again. Her anguish has since given way to anger. 

“The government doesn’t care about us,” she said, referring to the lack of investment in road-building, ditch-clearing and other improvements in the community. “If they cared, something would’ve been done by now.”

Beryl, which made landfall at Category 1 strength, caused extensive flooding, brought 80-mile-per-hour winds and wrecked Houston’s electrical infrastructure. It was far from the fiercest weather event the region had seen, but it took CenterPoint, the local utility company, two days to publish an outage map and two weeks to restore power to the nearly 3 million homes and businesses that lost it. Residents were left to bake in the sticky summer heat, the air heavy with chemicals released by nearby refineries and petrochemical plants that had either shut down or sustained damage during the storm. More than 40 people died from heat, fallen trees or drowning. 

Beryl is among the most recent examples of a compound disaster, where extreme weather events unfold at the same time, or where the fallout from one worsens that of another. 

“When a compound disaster strikes, we don’t only have multiple ongoing disasters, but disasters that start to bounce back and forth on one another,” said Jennifer Trivedi, a core faculty member at the University of Delaware’s Disaster Research Center. “[They] impact the ways that people might adapt or recover, which further complicates the situation. This is particularly true for people who are already vulnerable.” 

“The Most Disaster-Prone State in the Country”

Beryl grew to Category 5 strength unusually early in the hurricane season. Although the storm weakened by the time it slammed into Houston, the damage it caused was still severe. It seems to have caught Texas leaders by surprise. President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle that he had to reach out to the state’s acting governor, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the day after the storm hit to see if Texas required federal aid. Such aid can’t be provided until state leaders request it, usually before a disaster strikes. Patrick, accompanied by the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, W. Nim Kidd, deflected blame and denounced “lies” about the state’s slow response from Texans, media outlets, the president and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. In an ABC Channel 13 live stream, Patrick said that the president was “either totally incompetent and doesn’t remember what he said, or he’s just lied to me and Texas.” (Gov. Greg Abbott was on a previously scheduled economic development trip to Asia and didn’t return until after the hurricane blew through.) 

Texas is the most disaster-prone state in the country, with 372 federal disaster declarations since 1953, according to the Texas General Land Office. It’s the hardest place in the nation to obtain health care and among the most expensive for out-of-pocket care, according to an analysis of the latest federal data by The Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit, nonpartisan research group. What storm victims like Sandra Edwards believe to be a languid state response to Beryl was just one of many institutional failures. 

Once the CenterPoint grid collapsed, there were few reliable alternative power sources. Officials at all levels of government lacked a complete list of facilities with generators or whether they were well-maintained or functioning. The few health care facilities that serve low-income Houstonians went days without power, leaving many without essential care or medication. Outdated protocols meant that emergency responders couldn’t reach some people with disabilities by text message or other means. A registry that was supposed to alert local emergency planners to the needs of disabled Texans was incomplete. 

And, since Texas rarely punishes polluters for unplanned “emission events,” residents of industrialized parts of the city likely inhaled dangerous chemicals during and after the hurricane. The storm’s aftermath created a full-blown public health emergency of the sort that’s becoming increasingly common as a result of climate change.

“You got the flooding waters and then you got the flooding air chemicals,” said Leticia Gutierrez, community outreach director at Air Alliance Houston, a nonprofit clean-air advocacy group. “You’re trapped. Whether you leave or you stay, you’re risking your life.” 

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Democrat who serves on the newly created Senate Special Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness, Recovery, and Electricity, wrote in a post on X that the storm “exposed critical gaps in Texas’s disaster preparedness and left most vulnerable residents in dire straits.”

Her office is consulting with local and state authorities and putting together a playbook to prepare for the next disaster. She also plans to introduce legislation that would strengthen backup power requirements for nursing homes and require assisted-living facilities to have emergency generators that would protect residents from extreme temperatures. 

“These pieces of legislation are inspired by things I saw in my own district following the May Derecho and Hurricane Beryl,” she said in a written statement to Public Health Watch. “Through my fair share of disasters, I have noticed a pattern. During each power outage event our most vulnerable are left adrift. It’s a problem we have the ability to solve.”

Six months after Beryl, some in hard-hit areas of Houston remain distraught and furious.

A tarp still covers the hole in Edwards’ roof. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls. The water-damaged floorboards have swollen so much that they pose a trip hazard. Her saving grace, Edwards said, has been her network of friends, neighbors and members of community organizations. These people have filled the void left by what she believes is a shameful government response. 

“Thankfully,” she said, “I have a support system.”

In a written statement to Public Health Watch, a spokesperson for the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) said the agency “began notifying local partners and members of the public of Hurricane Beryl via press releases, television interviews and social media posts several days prior to [it] making landfall” and that it “consistently works to support local partners in addressing any unmet needs related to creation or implementation of local emergency planning efforts.” The spokesperson did not answer specific questions about TDEM’s response to Beryl. 

Community Center-Turned-Disaster Hub

Every Tuesday morning, the Carl Walker Jr. Multi-Purpose Center in the Fifth Ward, a historically Black neighborhood near downtown Houston, is abuzz. This is where the team at the nonprofit Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience holds weekly meetings for its members. Carmen Cavezza, one of the coalition’s senior organizers, usually presides. 

“We, of course, focus on making [residents’] homes climate proof and energy efficient,” she said. “But we want to go beyond that. We want to address all of the barriers that people encounter that prevent them from living in accordance with our changing climate.” 

This means offering food, help with FEMA applications and mental health support. The center is being transformed into a disaster hub that could house those in need during an event like Beryl. The organization also recruits “ambassadors”—residents who can help others. Sandra Edwards is one of them. 

I met Cavezza, Edwards and a few other ambassadors in the small corner office at the community center after one of the Tuesday sessions in late October. Many have lived in the Fifth Ward or neighboring communities for generations. 

Edwards and Yolanda Beo, another ambassador, grew up together in the 1960s. Most streets still hadn’t been paved, so rainwater often collected in ditches near their houses. Children in the neighborhood would swim in them and eat crawfish they caught there. Industrial pollution wasn’t widely discussed at the time, so few knew about the dangerous chemicals that Southern Pacific Railroad was dumping in an unlined pit a few miles away. The company later merged with the current owner of the site: Union Pacific. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services identified a cancer cluster in the Fifth Ward in 2019, which led to an investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That investigation continues. Meanwhile, cancer-causing creosote is still being discovered around the neighborhood.

Edwards left Houston when she was 16 but returned in 2010 to take care of her father. At that point, she said, only four families remained on her street in the Fifth Ward from more than a dozen she remembered from her childhood. Many, she said, had died of cancer or other chronic illnesses, including her mother. 

“Between [the pollution] and later the hurricanes, whole families were destroyed,” she said. 

Rev. James L. Caldwell, the founder and director of the Coalition of Community Organizers, also grew up in the Fifth Ward. He remembers a bustling neighborhood with nightclubs, barber shops, a pharmacy, a theater and other businesses. But decades of redlining and other discriminatory policies, he said, mutilated the place he once knew. 

“The community I grew up in no longer exists,” he said. “The disinvestment, the pollution, climate change, it’s all connected.” 

Poverty rates in the Fifth Ward remain high, according to a report by the bipartisan public policy Economic Innovation Group. More than half of its roughly 20,000 residents are Medicaid recipients. The neighborhood is also a “medical desert,” meaning access to quality, affordable healthcare is limited. And the neighborhood is one of the most susceptible in the nation to the effects of climate change, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index. 

“The populations that are impacted during disasters are the same ones that are [considered] medical deserts and the same ones that bear the brunt of industrial pollution,” said Benika Dixon, an assistant professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at Texas A&M University.

Flawed Emergency Assistance Registry 

Benjamin Broadway is another lifelong Fifth Ward resident. A diabetic, he suffered an infection in 2007 that led to the amputation of his right foot and the loss of his eyesight. He now uses a wheelchair. Navigating a disaster like Beryl, he said, is a disaster in its own right. 

Broadway was confined to his house during the hurricane and in the days that followed. He couldn’t get groceries or go to his doctor. He had no air conditioning. He was able to communicate with neighbors and community organizations through group chats on WhatsApp. One showed up at his door with a plate of pupusas. 

“It was because of them that I ate during that time,” he said. He’d figured out years earlier that the state’s program for linking disabled Texans with the state’s emergency-management apparatus was unreliable. 

The State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry, or STEAR, is supposed to alert local emergency planners and responders to people, like Broadway, who need extra help during disasters. Individuals provide certain information to the state, which then gives it to cities and counties that have opted to use the registry. There aren’t any guidelines for how local jurisdictions ought to use the information, creating a “false sense of reliance,” said Stephanie Duke, an attorney with Disability Rights Texas, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

Only a fraction of Texans with disabilities are in the registry. Duke said that since it’s voluntary, for both local jurisdictions and residents, many people remain unprotected. 

Despite the fact that he is registered, Broadway said that no one reached out to him during Beryl. 

In a written response to Public Health Watch, a spokesperson for Houston Mayor John Whitmire said the city realizes some residents didn’t receive STEAR alerts. Some weren’t in the registry. Others weren’t on the messaging list or had their addresses geocoded incorrectly. 

“These registrants will now be receiving calls and/or messaging in the future,” the spokesperson wrote. “Our top priority is ensuring that our safety messaging is reaching as many Houstonians as possible, especially the vulnerable community.”

Some advocates believe these proposed fixes don’t go far enough. Texas’ patchwork emergency management system wasn’t designed for people with special needs, said Germán Parodi, a co-director of The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, a nonprofit organization. It’s no wonder, he said, that some don’t trust it. 

“It’s a dog-and-pony-show,” Parodi said. “It doesn’t get at the need. … It puts the onus on the individual.” 

Clinic Becomes a Refuge

In the Fifth Ward, Legacy Community Health—one of the largest full-service systems on the Texas Gulf Coast—runs the only clinic in the area. When Beryl knocked out its power, patients were on their own. Widespread flooding and toppled trees meant that people couldn’t get to other hospitals or clinics around town. The Fifth Ward clinic was the last of Legacy’s more than 50 branches in Houston to get its power restored—five days after the storm. 

Felicia Cruise, the clinic’s director of operations, said that once the clinic was able to reopen, many patients showed up with symptoms of heat stress, like dehydration and vomiting, or adverse reactions to dirty air, like asthma flare-ups. Others simply sought refuge in the lobby, where they could cool off and charge their phones. She brought her own family to cool off at the clinic because there still wasn’t any power at their home. 

Legacy provides primary care services regardless of people’s ability to pay. It’s a Federally Qualified Health Center, or FQHC, which means it qualifies for specific reimbursements under Medicare and Medicaid. Robert Palussek, Legacy’s interim CEO and chief operating officer, said the system is preparing for upcoming disasters but is limited by scant government resources. More funding, for example, would allow Legacy’s Fifth Ward clinic to hire a coordinator who could lead its response in times of crisis. 

“We know these events will happen again,” Palussek said. “We don’t know if it’s going to be in six months or 12 months, but they will happen again.” 

In a statement to Public Health Watch, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Dallas who serves on the House Healthcare and Financial Services Subcommittee, urged a “whole-of-government approach” to disasters and increased investment in infrastructure that can withstand the effects of climate change, especially in places like the Fifth Ward, which have been repeatedly pummeled by violent weather. 

“Although investing in these communities would be extremely beneficial, we must do more,” Crockett said. “The most effective way to mitigate these issues is to tackle the climate crisis, give FEMA the resources it needs to respond to these events, pass common sense sustainability legislation, and address underlying systemic issues.” Better preparation by clinic operators and Medicaid expansion in Texas—one of 10 states that have resisted extending coverage to the working poor under the Affordable Care Act—would help as well, she said.

Tackling climate change also means confronting air pollution unleashed by Texas’ ever-expanding petrochemical industry. Chemical emissions from industrial facilities can make people sick; greenhouse-gas emissions gin up more frequent and ferocious storms. These emissions show no signs of slowing—hundreds of facilities released a collective 44 million pounds of unauthorized air pollutants in Texas in 2022—and state environmental enforcement historically has been tepid. 

After Beryl made landfall, thousands of pounds of chemicals were released into the air. According to an analysis of community air monitoring data by Air Alliance Houston, levels of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter skyrocketed. Smoky flares lit up the sky.

“Anytime there’s a storm, many facilities flare to remove excess buildup,” said Dr. Inyang Uwak, the alliance’s research and policy director. Flaring is used to get rid of excess combustible gases that develop during a plant breakdown, loss of power or during planned shutdowns and startups. It can unleash significant amounts of pollution. But the practice is rarely punished in Texas, even when it’s clear that a company could have prevented a release. 

The long-term health effects of inhaling airborne chemicals can be hard to quantify. New research, however, draws a straight line between storms like Beryl and excess deaths.

In a study published in the journal Nature in October, Stanford researchers found a “robust increase in excess mortality” following hurricanes and tropical cyclones in the United States between 1930 and 2015. They also observed that hurricanes indirectly cause thousands of deaths for nearly 15 years after a storm. Black people and people younger than 44 were at especially high risk. 

“What I am becoming increasingly worried about is the widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots after disasters,” said State Sen. Alvarado. “Safe living conditions during disasters should not be a privilege.”

Jana Cholakovska is a contributing writer for Public Health Watch, a nonprofit investigative news organization.