Last month’s terrible winter storm and power blackouts killed more than 100 people in Texas, state health officials said on Thursday.
The revised death toll is almost double the initial count and could grow even more with the arrival of the information, said the Texas State Department of Health Services.
Most of the 111 deaths were associated with hypothermia, the Texas State Department of Health Services said in an update.
Other causes of death include carbon monoxide poisoning, traffic accidents, fires and failure of medical equipment, the department said.
More than 4 million people in Texas lost energy as the generation facilities froze and the demand for electricity overwhelmed the system. People went unheated for days. Low temperatures caused pipes and water pipes to rupture, and millions were instructed to boil water if they had access to heating or running water.
The National Meteorological Service says the damage caused by the winter weather could surpass that of Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and could be the most expensive climate disaster in the state’s history.
The February storm was the deadliest in Harris County, where Houston is, which had 31 deaths, according to the State Department of Health Services.
Houston officials estimate the city had 50,000 homes and 400 apartment complexes with broken pipes, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner.
The deaths deemed related to the storm began on February 11, the day six people died in a pile-up of 130 vehicles in Fort Worth.
Earlier this month, the department linked 57 deaths to the climate disaster. In some cases, the medical team reports on causes of death related to weather or flagging cases, and in others, epidemiologists in the department use public death reports and compare them with death certificates.
The Texas blackout was considered one of the worst in the country’s history.
The Texas Electric Reliability Council, which runs the state’s power grid, has been heavily criticized. The board members resigned, the CEO was dismissed and the chairman of the Public Utility Commission also resigned.
ERCOT officials said the decision to turn off the power during the winter prevented a major and uncontrolled blackout, which would take weeks to recover.
