The power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl across Houston and surrounding parts of Texas’ Gulf Coast were by no means a new phenomenon. When a powerful derecho storm blew through a few months ago, around 1 million people were left without power for several days.
But when Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on July 8, it knocked out power for 2.6 million customers — and it took almost two weeks for power to be fully restored to everyone. That left vulnerable people, like low-income seniors, sweltering without air conditioning in a post-storm heatwave.
That is, until rapper Megan Thee Stallion came to the rescue.
The Houston-raised rapper, whose real name is Megan Pete, announced last week that her Pete and Thomas Foundation is working with the local nonprofit Bread of Life to distribute free power generators to seniors across Houston. The organizations sent 10 generators during the Beryl outages, and will continue the relief program throughout the rest of the 2024 hurricane season
“”It’s been painful to watch the elderly population in Houston suffer without electricity during these devastating storms,” the rapper said in a statement. “We need to do our part to provide our elders with the best resources possible to withstand future emergencies.”
Rudy Rasmus, executive director of Bread of Life, said in a statement the goal is “to provide generators to our most vulnerable seniors ahead of storms or other events that knock out power so there is no interruption in service,” .
The nonprofits will have their work cut out for them: the storms are only going to keep coming, bigger and wetter than ever. And because the Texas power grid is not connected to regional electric networks, having backup power is quickly becoming a necessity for vulnerable residents.
They are right to highlight that older residents: out of the 14 Houstonians whose deaths were attributed to the hurricane, half died from heat-related issues during the power outage. One 110-year-old woman who lived outside of Houston in Humble, Texas, died on July 16, after more than a week without power.
Because Houston is about 22% Black, there is an increased risk for Black residents. They are more likely than whites to suffer hurricane damage to their homes as well as heat-related illnesses after a power outage.
Since 2021, when a winter storm in Texas caused the largest blackout in the U.S. since 2003, authorities have intensely focused on the power-generation side of the state’s electrical grid vulnerabilities. But there seems to be less attention being paid to the more workaday issues of maintaining power lines and poles, and trimming trees. Which means that when the next storm hits, it’s likely that there will be more wide-spread outages too.
But this time around, Megan Thee Stallion (or her nonprofit, rather) will be ready.
