‘They welcomed us with open arms’
Houston furniture store offers shelter after winter storm
HOUSTON — For Tina Rios, her family and hundreds of other people, shelter from the winter storm that has left much of Houston without power or heat came from an unusual place: a furniture store.
Sitting at one of the many tables on display Wednesday inside Gallery Furniture’s cavernous showroom, Rios, 32, explained how she “started stressing really, really hard” after her suburban Houston mobile home lost power around 4:30 a.m. on Monday and she, her husband, Eric Bennis, and their three children were soon able to see their breath inside. After spending one frigid night there, they realized they needed to find somewhere warm to wait out the blackout, not so much for the parents, who grew up in New Jersey and are used to cold, but for the children, ages 3, 9 and 10.
“They’re Texas babies,” said Bennis, a 31-yearold tow truck driver. “This is the first time they’ve seen white on the ground.”
They heard Gallery Furniture’s owner, Jim McIngvale, had opened his main store in north Houston as a shelter, so they made the hourlong drive from Channelview.
“We came in, and they welcomed us with open arms,” said an emotional Rios.
McIngvale, known as “Mattress Mack,” said Houston has been good to his business and his employees and that he was just doing his part to help.
“We all have a responsibility for the well-being of the community and we think this is our responsibility,” said McIngvale, who later walked around the store greeting people and offering them doughnuts and kolaches — Czech pastries that are popular in parts of Texas.
McIngvale previously opened the store, which has a generator that can power the location for several days, as a shelter after flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 inundated much of Houston. He has also provided meals for people during the coronavirus pandemic.
Unlike in 2017, McIngvale has had to take precautions to try to prevent the spread of covid-19. Anyone entering the makeshift shelter must wear a mask and bottles of hand sanitizer were stationed throughout the store.
People sat around dining room tables in the showroom on Wednesday and ate food near a
* The table below lists overall U.S. COVID-19 vaccine distribution and administration. Because totals may differ based upon the time of reporting, the Arkansas data includes information released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH).
*Vaccination data reported on the CDC COVID Data Tracker may differ from data reported by states and territories for several reasons: Data may be updated on different schedules and reflect data “as of” different dates or times of day. There may be a delay between the time a vaccination record appears in a state or jurisdictional system and when it is received by CDC.
Occasionally, there may be technical issues related to processing or transmission of data. When issues arise, CDC works closely with the states, territories, and federal entities to resolve the problem. CDC receives vaccine administration information from multiple sources, including jurisdictional immunization information systems, pharmacies, federal agencies receiving a direct vaccine allocation, and the Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS), which supports temporary, mobile, or satellite clinics. Validation and business rules applied to prevent data duplication may cause data presented on the COVID Data Tracker to differ from what is in state immunization systems and dashboards. Every effort is made to reconcile doses administered that are reported through more than one system but, in certain circumstances, some vaccine doses administered could be counted more than once.
Healthcare providers report doses administered to federal, state, territorial, and local agencies up to 72 hours after administration. There may be additional lag for data to be transmitted from the federal, state, territorial, or local agency to CDC. A large difference between the number of doses distributed and the number of people initiating vaccination is expected due to several factors, including the time between doses being shipped and received, the time it takes for doses delivered to be administered, the time it takes for administered doses to be reported to CDC, and management of available vaccine stocks by jurisdictions and federal pharmacy partners.
Doses distributed and administered are reported separately for federal entities. Doses administered by federal entities are not generally attributed to the jurisdictions in which they were administered. However, some federal sites may report such doses to both the jurisdiction and to the federal entity. The “Rate per 100,000” metric displays as “n/a” for federal entities because population-based rates are not applicable. Data for federal entities will display when the “Counts” metric is selected. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) totals include employees, veteran patients, and other federal partners vaccinated by VHA.