Two people, including a child, were found dead Tuesday from carbon monoxide poisoning after a car was used to generate heat in a Houston home hit by widespread power outages from a rare winter storm.
Houston officers and firefighters responded to a welfare call to find two adults and two children suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, the police department said Tuesday morning. A woman and a girl did not survive, while a man and a boy were rushed to a hospital for treatment. The names of the victims have not been released.
"Initial indications are that car was running in the attached garage to create heat as the power is out. Cars, grills and generators should not be used in or near a building," the department said in a statement.
A deadly winter storm pummeling the country's south and mid-section has left more than 4 million people without power in Texas, as record-low temperatures overwhelmed the state's electric grid.
The areas hardest hit by power outages were around Galveston and Houston, according to poweroutage.us.
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The Houston Chronicle, meanwhile, was forced to stop producing its print edition after its plant lost power at 2 a.m. In a note to subscribers, the newspaper said that hadn't even happened when the city was battered by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Abilene, a city of about 170,000 residents, shut off its water services as a result of power outages at all three of its water treatment plants, officials tweeted. And in an effort to save power, the skyline in Dallas went dark.
At least 25 people have died in weather-related fatalities so far since the weekend, the majority in Texas.
