HOUSTON: At least eight people were killed in the southern United States after storm Beryl felled trees and caused heavy flooding, before being downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Tuesday.
In the aftermath, as millions in the Houston area remained without power and were sweating under a heat advisory, President Joe Biden said sweltering temperatures were “the greatest concern.”
Beryl entered Texas from the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday. At least seven people died in the storm in Texas, with another person killed in neighboring Louisiana, authorities said.
The total death toll from the record-breaking hurricane has risen to at least 18 after it tore through the Caribbean last week — at one point as a Category 5 hurricane, the highest recordable strength.
Some 2 million households in Texas were without electricity Tuesday evening due to damaged power grids, even as temperatures were forecast to reach 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) with humidity factored in.
“The greatest concern right now is the power outages and extreme heat that is impacting Texans,” Biden said in a statement.
Another 14,000 homes were also without power in Louisiana, according to the poweroutage.us tracker.
Air-conditioned shelters for residents were set up while crews worked to restore service.
Beryl weakened Tuesday and was heading northeast through the midwest United States with 30 miles (45 kilometers) per hour winds, the US National Hurricane Center said, warning it could still generate flooding and tornadoes.
The sprawling city of Houston, home to 2.3 million people, was badly battered by hurricane-strength winds and flooding.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said on X that a 53-year-old man and 74-year-old woman had died in separate incidents of trees falling on houses.
Later, Houston Mayor John Whitmire told a press conference that one person died after a lightning strike possibly ignited a fire, while a police department employee died in floodwaters on his way to work.
Meanwhile in Louisiana, one death was announced by the Bossier Parish sheriff’s office, also caused by a tree falling on a home.

Rose Michalec, 51, told AFP that Beryl blew down fences in her south Houston neighborhood.
“It’s quite a bit of damage... It’s more than we expected,” she said.
In downtown Houston, several areas were inundated, including the park where 76-year-old Floyd Robinson usually walks.
“I’m seeing more of this kind of damaging water than I’ve ever seen before,” the lifelong Houston resident told AFP.
“This is just the beginning of July and for us to have a storm of this magnitude is very rare.”
Along the Texas coastline, several waterfront homes and buildings had their roofs torn off by the wind.

Beryl first slammed Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as a Category 4 storm, before plowing past the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, and at one point strengthening to Category 5.
It hit Mexico on Friday, flattening trees and lampposts and ripping off roof tiles.
Beryl left a deadly toll with three deaths in Grenada, two in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, three in Venezuela and two in Jamaica.
It is the first hurricane since NHC record-keeping began to reach the Category 4 level in June, and the earliest to hit the highest Category 5 in July.
Beryl is also the earliest hurricane to make landfall in Texas in a decade, according to expert Michael Lowry.
It is extremely rare for such a powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.
Scientists say climate change likely plays a role in the rapid intensification of storms such as Beryl because there is more energy in a warmer ocean for them to feed on.
 

WASHINGTON: The US has not seen Russia shift on its preference from previous US presidential elections on who it prefers to win this year, a US intelligence official said on Tuesday, indicating Moscow again favors Republican Donald Trump.
The official, briefing reporters on US election security, did not name the former president and presumptive Republican nominee when asked who Moscow wants as the next US president.
But, he indicated that Russia favored Trump, saying the US intelligence community had not changed its assessments from previous elections.
Those assessments found Moscow tried through influence campaigns to help Trump win in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and in 2020 against President Joe Biden.
“We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections, given the role the US is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia,” said the official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump frequently has criticized the scale of US military support for Ukraine — some $60 billion since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 — and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the greatest salesman ever.”
Two of his national security advisers have presented Trump with a plan to end US military aid to Ukraine unless it opened talks with Russia to end the conflict.
On policy toward NATO, Trump has said he would “encourage” Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any alliance member that did not spend enough on defense and he would not defend them.
The NATO charter obliges members to come to the defense of those who are attacked.
The ODNI official conducted the briefing on condition of anonymity with ODNI colleagues and officials from the FBI and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, an agency that conducts cyber defense for the government and works with private industry.
He defined election influence as efforts to shape the outcome of polls or undermine democratic processes, while interference constitutes efforts to disrupt the ability of the US to hold a free and fair vote.
The US has not monitored plans by any country to “degrade or disrupt” the country’s ability to hold the November elections, he said.
But Russia, he continued, has begun through social media and other means trying to influence specific groups of US voters in battleground states, “promote divisive narratives and denigrate specific politicians” who he did not identify.
“Russia is undertaking a whole of government approach to influence the election, including the presidential, Congress, and public opinion,” he said.
Moscow “determines which candidates they’re willing to support or oppose largely based on their stance toward further US aid to Ukraine and related issues,” said the official. “It’s all the tactics we’ve seen before, primarily through social media efforts” and “using US voices to amplify their narratives.”
Russia recently has been seeking to influence US audiences through “encrypted direct messaging channels,” said the official. He did not elaborate.
China is assessed as currently not planning “to influence the outcome of the presidential race,” the official said.
The US views China as its leading geostrategic rival. Beijing and Washington have been working to ease strains. The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Beijing is trying to expand its ability to collect and monitor data from social media platforms “probably to better understand and eventually manipulate public opinion,” the official said.
The official called generative artificial intelligence a “malign influence accelerant” being increasingly used to “more convincingly tailor” video and other content ahead of the November vote.