Texas officials began moving patients into a temporary field hospital in Houston’s massive sports complex on Wednesday, two days after Hurricane Beryl left millions without power as excessive heat and humidity swamped the region.
The lack of electricity has strained the health care system in the nation’s fourth-largest city. Doctors determined that it was not safe to discharge some patients to homes without air-conditioning, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a news conference, leading to “backed up” hospitals and three-hour wait times for ambulances to drop off patients.
The crisis in Houston comes as searing heat has engulfed a vast swath of the United States, with 144 million people under National Weather Service heat advisories on Wednesday in the West and the Pacific Northwest, as well as in southeast Texas and many major cities on the East Coast.
The situation is most pressing in the Houston area, where nearly 1.3 million utility customers remained without power on Wednesday, down from a high of 2.7 million in East Texas on Monday at Hurricane Beryl’s peak. Mr. Patrick said the prolonged outage, which could extend for days, would be the largest ever seen by the city’s utility, CenterPoint Energy.
State officials said they would set up 250 beds in an arena at NRG Park, the sports complex that includes an NFL stadium and houses the famous Houston rodeo, to receive and treat hospital patients who are stable and can be discharged but do not have a cool home to go to.
The facility opened with 100 beds on Wednesday morning, and half of those were full by the afternoon, said Lori Upton, chief executive of the SouthEast Texas Regional Advisory Council. Ms. Upton said the temporary hospital is expected to remain in operation for five to seven days.
Across the country, large parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, as well as the corridor from Washington, D.C., to New Jersey, were under excessive heat warnings, indicating “extremely dangerous heat conditions.”
Forecasters expect those conditions to persist in the West for several more days, and to redevelop in the Southeast later in the week.
The heat and humidity in Houston on Wednesday was not unusual for this time of year, but because of the widespread power outages, National Weather Service forecasters in the area lowered their threshold for issuing heat alerts.
Typically, a heat advisory would be issued in Houston when the heat index — a measure of how hot the air feels, considering both temperature and humidity — was expected to reach 108 or higher. But the forecasters issued one for Wednesday when the index was expected to top out at 101.
The city has also opened dozens of cooling centers and is distributing ice and water, according to its Office of Emergency Management.
One person died of heat stroke in Matagorda County, 90 miles southwest of Houston, on Tuesday afternoon, officials said Wednesday.
Carrington Gilbert, 33, who lives in the Medical Center area of Houston, was waiting on Wednesday morning for the power to come back on, more than 48 hours after the lights first went out in her home. She and her 4-year-old daughter were cooling down with hand-held fans that they charged in her car, and were planning to head to a friend’s house if the power stayed out.
Ms. Gilbert said she was worried about her grandparents in nearby Pearland, who were also without power. Her cell service was down as well.
“If it gets too hot in your house, you can’t call anyone for help,” she said.
Temperatures in southeast Texas will drop a bit over the next few days, as more rain and cloud cover return to the region.
Washington, D.C., may also get a reprieve later in the week, but not before hitting an expected peak heat index of 110 degrees Wednesday afternoon. Excessive heat warnings were issued for areas along the I-95 urban corridor, including Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
In the West, a long-duration heat wave that started last week will continue to break or threaten records for a few more days. Temperatures are expected to reach or exceed daily record highs in dozens of places west of the Rockies, from Mexico to Canada, until Friday.
The hot pink signifying an excessive heat warning and orange heat advisories made the ” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>weather map of the western United States look like a mirage of rainbow sherbet. Heat advisories are posted for most of the region other than high mountain elevations.
Nevada did not have a single location on Wednesday that was not under a heat advisory or warning. Las Vegas, where the temperature on Sunday reached 120 degrees for the first time in its recorded history, was expected to peak at 118 on Wednesday.
The heat wave in California and the Northwest is expected to ease in the next few days but not end completely. Temperatures are likely to remain 10 degrees above average or more through the weekend.
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