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HOUSTON (AP) — Houston’s biggest utility came under mounting pressure Wednesday over its response to Hurricane Beryl, as nearly 1.4 million area homes and businesses remained without power and residents searched for places to cool off, fuel up and find something to eat.

City Council member Abbie Kamin called the extended lack of power a “life safety concern.”

“We say ‘everything we can do’ to get the lights back on. In my opinion, respectfully, they should be on,” Kamin told a CenterPoint Energy executive during a council meeting.

“This was a Category 1 (storm),” Kamin said, referring to the weakest type of hurricane. ”We know that this severe weather, the extreme weather due to climate change, is real and we’ve known for some time.”

Power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers after the storm made landfall in Texas on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us. Brad Tutunjian, vice president for regulatory policy for CenterPoint Energy, defended the company’s response and told council members that more than 1 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday morning, although the company’s online tracker put the figure at just under a million at the time.

“To me, I think that’s a monumental number right there,” he said.

The company has acknowledged that most of the 12,000 workers it brought in to help the recovery effort were not in the Houston area when the storm arrived. Initial forecasts had the storm blowing ashore much farther south along Gulf Coast, near the Texas-Mexico border, before heading toward Houston.

The company would not ask third-party workers from other companies and municipalities to pre-position and “ride out” the storm, “because that is not safe,” he said.

“We ask you to get as close as possible, so you can respond as efficiently as practical,” he said of the instructions given to the workers.

Tutunjian noted how difficult it is to quickly restore power that was cut off by falling trees and branches.

“When we have storms such as this, with the tree completely coming down … taking out our lines and our poles, that’s where all the time comes in to do the restoration work,” he said.

Council members pressed Tutunjian about why the company, which has been the Houston area for about 100 years, hasn’t lain more of its power lines underground. He replied that it has been laying all new lines underground in residential areas for decades.

Two council members said they received a text about a house that burned down after reporting a downed power line. The texts reported the fire department said it could not do anything, and the utility company did not respond.

Beryl has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths — one in Louisiana and six in Texas — and at least 11 in the Caribbean. It weakened as it moved deeper into the U.S. and early Wednesday was a post-tropical cyclone centered over northeastern Indiana.

A flood watch was in effect for parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The storm spawned suspected tornadoes in parts of Indiana and Kentucky.

In the Houston area, Beryl compounded and repeated the misery of May, when storms killed eight people and left nearly a million customers without power.

High temperatures in Houston on Wednesday were expected to climb into the 90s (above 32.2 Celsius), with humidity making it feel even hotter.

People coped as best they could. Kyuta Allen took her family to a Houston community center to cool down and use the internet.

“During the day, you can have the doors open. But at night, you’ve got to board up and lock up — lock yourself like into a sauna,” she said.

Raquel Desimone, who sought relief in a cooling center, has lived in the Houston area since about 2000 and has been through multiple hurricanes and tropical storms. Still, was surprised and frustrated having to scrambled yet again for power and shelter from the heat.

“I went through Rita, Ike, Imelda and Harvey,” Desimone said. “That the infrastructure can’t handle a basic storm, leaving for a Category 1, (it) is sort of crazy to me that I’m having to do this.”

Nim Kidd, head of the state’s division of emergency management, stressed that restoring power was the top priority.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting as governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is overseas, said nursing homes and assisted living centers were the highest priority. Sixteen hospitals ran on generator power Tuesday morning, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

State officials planned to use a sports and event complex to temporarily hold up to 250 hospital patients who are awaiting discharge but cannot be released to homes with no power.

Patrick said Tuesday that he would wait until after the recovery effort to focus on CenterPoint’s response and whether the company was poorly prepared.

“CenterPoint will have to answer for themselves, if they were prepared, if they were positions. Their company is responsible for that. The state was in position,” he said. “I’ll tell you whether I’m satisfied or not when I have a full report of where their crews were when they were asked to come in.”

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Fort Campbell soldier found dead in her home earlier this year died of nearly 70 stab wounds, according to an autopsy report.

No arrests have been made in the death of 23-year-old Pfc. Katia Dueñas Aguilar, whose body was found in her Tennessee home in May near the Army post.

Clarksville Police said Wednesday that no arrests have been made.

An autopsy report from the Montgomery County Medical Examiner’s Office said Dueñas Aguilar suffered 68 stab wounds to her neck and upper body, The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle reported.

The medical examiner ruled the cause of death a homicide as a result of sharp force injuries of the neck, the newspaper reported.

Dueñas Aguilar, of Mesquite Texas, enlisted in the Army in 2018 and a year later came to Fort Campbell, on the Tennessee-Kentucky border. She was a member of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division.

Her family and The League of United Latin American Citizens have offered a reward of $55,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Clarksville Police and Army criminal investigators are working together on the investigation.

During a news conference in May in Texas, Dueñas Aguilar’s family asked for justice for her family. They said she was a mother with a 4-year-old son.

DALLAS – KERA reports that north Texans should feel some relief from the heat after the Fourth of July. Daniel Huckaby, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said the persistent heat dome that set over Texas since June will break down over the top of the Dallas-Fort Worth area after the holiday. “It’s rare that it’s persistent throughout the season,” he said. “It tends to come and go over the course of the season.” Texas has recorded some of its hottest summers in recent decades. According to a report by the Texas Tribune, 19 summers since 2000 have been warmer than the 20th-century average as of 2023. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, seven of the last 30 years have ranked among the top ten years for the greatest consecutive 100 degree days in the summertime. National Weather Service data records show that 2023 and 2022 were in the top ten years for greatest consecutive 100 degree days for the region. But one difference between this year and the past two years is rain.

While 2023 and 2022 had some of the highest number of 100 degree days in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, there was also lower precipitation in April and May of those years compared to this year. Huckaby said this year’s spring rainfall could contribute to a milder summer. “Now that’s not to say that it won’t be hot, it’s always hot here in Texas in the summertime,” he said. “But, we do tend to mitigate those high temperatures just a bit.” During this year’s heat wave, Huckaby said temperatures in the Dallas-Fort Worth area hit 100 degrees a few times, but a lot of the days peaked at 90 degrees. “If we were in drought like we were the last couple summers, those probably would have all been triple digit days,” he said. “So that’s where the difference comes in.” However, Huckaby said the outlook is for the area to have a warmer summer than normal overall for June, July, and August due to a trend toward warmer summers. While this summer may not compare to last year — its second hottest on record — higher temperatures recorded in recent decades are still cause for concern.

AUSTIN – KUT reports that drivers line up down the street to grab groceries from a small, white house in the Dunbar neighborhood of San Marcos. For some time, the renovated house worked for the Hays County Food Bank, but as more and more people rely on it, the food bank has outgrown the space. Executive Director Lisa Young said overhanging tree branches and telephone wires also don’t allow trucks to bring in larger quantities of food. Now, the food bank is moving to a bigger building. “It’s going to be transformational for us,” Young said. The food bank distributes leftover produce, meat and baked goods from local grocery stores. Young said the volume of food the bank sends out has gone up every year since the pandemic. “In 2023, we distributed 1.3 million pounds of food through this little carport here,” she said. “That was a miracle.”

Sari Vatske, president and CEO of the Central Texas Food Bank, said more than 16% of adults and 25% of children in the region are food insecure. This means they don’t know if they will have enough food or where their next meal will come from. At the end of 2023, food insecurity in the 21 counties the Central Texas Food Bank serves — including Travis, Hays and Williamson — was at 14%. That’s slightly higher than the national average, according to Vatske. The phasing out of COVID-19 assistance, like stimulus checks and temporary food stamp programs, has increased reliance on food banks. Inflation has added to the strain. The USDA reports the cost of groceries should go up by about 2.5% each year, with some items like beef and eggs getting even more expensive annually. But prices increased overall by 11.4% in 2022 and another 5% in 2023. “We are surpassing the number of individuals that we’re serving now, beyond at the height of the pandemic,” Vatske said.