United States: When Hurricane Beryl hit Houston this summer, Kimberly Rubit had one important job: to keep her daughter, Mary, safe. Mary, who is 42 years old, has severe disabilities and cannot care for herself.  

After the hurricane knocked out the power for 10 days, Kimberly worked nonstop to stop her daughter from overheating since there was no air conditioning, water, or lights. 

 Sadly, the power outage caused many problems for others too, with at least 36 people dying because of the heat. Kimberly’s quick thinking and hard work helped keep her daughter safe during this tough time. 

Rubit said it was miserable. “I’m sick of it.” 

As reported by the HealthDay, an AP analysis of government data shows that more frequently, electric grids have buckled, and outages have grown longer across the U.S. as warming vapor carries more water and rouses more devastating storms. A “bomb cyclone ” knocked out roughly half a million outages in the Pacific Northwest this week. 

Furthermore, people with disabilities and chronic health conditions are particularly vulnerable when the power goes out, and many people who live in homes that cannot be weatherized, do not have the backup power supplies or electricity they need to better withstand high temperatures and cold freezes, or can’t afford, their electricity bills, said Diana Hernandez, sociomedical sciences professor at Columbia University and researcher on energy instability in U.S. homes. 

About 1 in 3 U.S. households at any given time are “actively trying” to avoid a disconnection or are dealing with the ramifications afterwards, Hernandez said. 

With another winter looming in Texas, people can’t stop fearing another blackout like the one that happened during a cold freeze in 2021 when millions were left without power for days and nearly 200 people died.  

Our odds of dodging a rolling black out are still slim, though, even though we’ve worked aggressively to build more resilience, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that controls the majority of the state’s power grid, said. 

Millions were sickened sweating out the July heat in the sweltering days when Beryl knocked out power for days. CenterPoint Energy, which shoulders the responsibilities of Houston’s power utility, took a lot of heat from local and state officials who said the utility should have communicated better, taken more preventive measures such as trimming trees before the storm and repaired downed power lines more quickly. The Texas attorney general continues to investigate the utility’s response.