Hurricane Beryl has been battering the Caribbean for the past few days and has made landfall in Texas. Beryl has left millions of homes in the southern United States without power and has already claimed the lives of at least two people.
The victims are a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman. They were trapped under the rubble after a tree fell on their house.
That brings the death toll to nine after Beryl also claimed seven lives in the Caribbean and Venezuela. More than 2 million homes in Texas were also without electricity as of Monday morning, according to the website poweroutage.us. Many residents have been evacuated.
“We need to take Beryl very seriously, ” says Houston Mayor John Whitmire. More than 1,000 flights were cancelled at the city’s main airport, according to FlightAware. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) fears tornadoes.
Hurricane Alert
Several parts of Texas are under hurricane watch after Beryl strengthened Sunday night with winds of 80 mph (130 kph). Beryl, now classified as a Category 1 hurricane on a scale of 5, is less powerful than it was during its passage through the Antilles, where it was a Category 5.
Galveston, southeast of Houston, has issued a voluntary evacuation of certain areas, and social media has shown lines of cars leaving the city.
According to the NHC, Beryl is expected to move toward eastern Texas on Monday before continuing toward Mississippi and Ohio on Tuesday and Wednesday. “We expect steady to rapid weakening as Beryl moves inland, later strengthening to a tropical storm and then becoming a tropical depression on Tuesday,” the forecast service added.