Frigid conditions add to first responders’ hardships
Firefighters battle blaze that displaces 80 in southwest Houston; officers deal with hundreds of crashes
At first, Maylor Mendoza thought the fumes were coming from the kitchen; his sister burning lunch.
But when smoke started filling his apartment, he rushed outside, to find the roof of the unit above his burning. Soon, dozens of residents of the southwest unit apartment complex on Edgemoor and Mullins were shivering outside, waiting as firefighters battled the blaze.
“We don’t know what happened,” said Mendoza, 23. “We think it was the heater, it’s really cold.”
He’d only been able to grab some clothes for his young nephew, he said.
“I’ve never felt that feeling before,” he said. “It was crazy.”
Nearby, Dagoberto Matamoros stood with his 14year-old son, Josue, who’d rushed out of the apartment so fast he hadn’t had time to change out of shorts and flip-flops into warmer clothes.
“We smelled the smoke and had to run,” Matamoros said.
Houston Assistant Fire Chief Michael Mire said the fire had displaced some 80
residents. At one point, firefighters called a mayday, after a partial roof collapse, he said. Ultimately, two firefighters were transported to hospitals, but were not seriously injured, he said.
“It’s amazing with all the challenges we had only two injuries,” Mire said.
The fire was just one of numerous challenges facing Houstonians and the region’s first responders on Monday.
Houston police officers responded to hundreds of crashes, Chief Art Acevedo said. Deputies from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office handled more than 100 weather-related traffic incidents, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said, in a tweet.
The bulk of the dispatches were to 52 minor crashes, Gonzalez said. But in addition there have been at least 11 major crashes.
For most of the morning, many of the region’s highways were mostly barren. The widespread power outages left shopping centers empty, buildings darkened. In some areas, snow continued to fall, and gusts of wind exposed patches of slick ice, which officials said would only become more perilous as the temperatures dropped later in the day.
“It seems like half the city has power, and half doesn’t,” said Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy James Drennan, who works in the department’s Motor Assistance Program and spent the day patrolling up and down Interstate 10 and blocking off an entry ramp on Texas 99 in west Harris County. “It depends on what street you live on.”
Near Bingle and Voss, one car had abruptly lost power.
“It just stopped working,” its befuddled owner said, shortly before a wrecker towed it away.
Further west, two deputies barricaded the entrance to the Texas 99 overpass, one of many roads closed due to the wintry weather.
So many roads, off-ramps and overpasses were closed that the Department of Transportation ran out of barrels to blockade some spots, which forced deputies to man individual intersections in their cars.
Around 11 a.m., Drennan pulled up behind a stalled 18-wheeler, where a driver and mechanic were busily adjusting air hoses. The cold weather had frozen up one connection, they said.
Francisco Sanchez, the spokesman for the Harris County Office of Emergency Operations, said Harris County has avoided many of the challenges posed by the last major freeze, back in 2011.
During that storm, he said, icy weather caused 2,000 crashes during one cold night.
“I don’t know whether its the messaging, or the forecast, we’re seeing a lot fewer people on the roads. That’s a big plus for us, when we don’t have to focus on so many wrecks.
In many ways, the deep freeze created challenges almost as significant as Hurricane Harvey, said Houston Police Officers’ Union President Douglas Griffith. The loss of power made it much more difficult to keep officers warm and fed, he said.
“We’re doing as good as can be expected,” he said. “Usually we can cook meals (for officers). We can’t do that here. We were trying to do that, but stores are closed, so we can’t get supplies.”
The power outages also knocked refrigeration units offline at the Harris County Public Health department, sending officials scrambling to distribute COVID-19 vaccines and make sure none of the doses went to waste.
A sheriff’s spokesman said the public health department contacted them, and ultimately gave them about 3,000 doses.
The department sent word to detention officers and patrol officers they had until early afternoon to go down to the jail and get it, spokesman Jason Spencer said. After those employees received vaccines, medical personnel at the jail began vaccinating some inmates.
“We also knew there would probably not be enough employee demand, or that it wasn’t likely, so they have started offering to people in the jail to make sure the vaccine doesn’t go to waste,” he said. “And because they’re a highly vulnerable population as well, and (vaccinating them) makes the jail environment safer for everyone the more people vaccinated the better.”
Officials said they suspected the cold was responsible for at least one death: a 60-year-old homeless man discovered under an overpass in east Harris County.
Spencer said that earlier in the week, the sheriff ’s office’s Homeless Outreach Team had discovered the man and offered to take him to a shelter but he declined.
Volunteers from organizations like Crowdsource Rescue spent the day trying to help elderly residents warm up their homes or get to hotels to shelter from the icy weather.
“It’s like a slow-moving hurricane,” said Matthew Marchetti, the group’s cofounder. “But cold, we’re not used to, ice on road, not used to, and power starts going off. Any one thing, we can handle, but all of a sudden we’re getting calls from senior citizens — their homes are below 50, then below 40, then 35, and in some we’ve had places where it’s freezing.”
Marchetti said Crowdsource Rescue members took generators and space heaters to some homes to try to warm them, at least above freezing, and in other cases were shuttling residents to hotels. “There’s the immediate need and longerterm need,” he said.
In the city of South Houston, lack of power sent officials scrambling to find fuel for generators to power the police station and the city’s sewage treatment plants.
“About 2 a.m. we lost power,” said Council Member Willie Rios. “That’s when citizens started calling PD. It’s been a roller coaster dealing with the snow and ice. … It looked nice, but it was a disaster: Broken water pipes, elderly residents without electricity, a lot people without means of getting around. It’s been crazy.”
Things are going to get worse, he said. “I know it’s going to get more intense tonight. And people are already freezing. A lot of senior citizens are missing oxygen, or needing dialysis and can’t get to platelet treatment centers.”
Back in southwest Houston, Matamoros watched firefighters battle the blaze at his apartment complex as the shadows lengthened.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do. He was worried about his family’s two cats, which he said might still be inside the apartment.
“We lost everything,” he said.
And it was only going to get colder.