Two people, including a child, were found dead on Tuesday from carbon monoxide poisoning after a car was used to generate heat in a Houston home, hit by a general power outage in a rare winter storm.
Houston officials and firefighters responded to a request for social assistance to find two adults and two children with carbon monoxide poisoning, the police department said Tuesday morning. A woman and a girl did not survive, while a man and a boy were rushed to a hospital for treatment. The names of the victims were not disclosed.
“Initial indications are that the car was running in the attached garage to create heat, as the power is cut off. Cars, grills and generators should not be used inside or near a building,” the department said in a statement.
A terrible winter storm that strikes the south and middle of the country has left more than 4 million people without power in Texas, while record low temperatures have overwhelmed the state’s power grid.
The areas most affected by power outages were around Galveston and Houston, according to poweroutage.us.
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The Houston Chronicle, for its part, was forced to stop producing its print edition after its plant lost power at 2 am. In a note to subscribers, the newspaper said it had not even happened when the city was hit by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Abilene, a city of about 170,000, has shut down its water services as a result of power outages at all three water treatment plants, officials said. And in an effort to save energy, the skyline in Dallas went dark.
At least 25 people have died in weather-related fatalities so far since the weekend, mostly in Texas.
