The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association voted in favor of a 10-percent premium increase for residential and commercial policyholders.  The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association voted in favor of a 10-percent premium increase for residential and commercial policyholders. view article

Jessica Flores awoke her young son about 7 a.m. March 22. By then, she had made breakfast and driven her husband, Christopher Reza, to work in time for his 6 a.m. start as a stonecutter. She also had prepared her son’s lunch: a ham sandwich, cookies, water, juice, diced apples and a mandarin.  It was the first day Mauro was to be farther away than school. She felt a strong desire to keep him home. She called her husband.  view article

Third suspect in Round Rock mass shooting allegedly used 'Glock switch,' lost control of gun. A third suspect arrested in the Round Rock mass shooting may have lost control of his gun while using a machine gun conversion device.  Court documents obtained by KVUE reveal 18-year-old Keshawn Dixon is a documented gang member with an "extensive history" with Round Rock police. Dixon is the latest person to be arrested in the deadly shooting at the Juneteenth festival at Old Settlers Park.  According to the affidavit, Dixon told authorities he was only at the festival before the shooting that left two women dead and 14 others hurt.  Witnesses stated that they recognized Dixon even though he was wearing a white ski mask and a gray hoodie. One of Dixon's family members also allegedly admitted to a witness that he was involved in the shooting.  During their investigation, authorities learned that Dixon has a history of violent offenses, including terroristic threat, assault, evading arrest and multiple robberies. The affidavit states that Dixon also had pictures of himself on his Instagram holding a handgun with a "Glock switch," which can turn semi-automatic pistols and rifles into fully automatic weapons. view article

One week after Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is creating a Special Senate Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness to address recovery, electricity and reliability in the name of improving utility companies' response to future storms. view article

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — Flour Bluff school leaders expect a 10% increase in their insurance premium for the upcoming school year, which they said affects things like teacher pay, building renovations and more. They, along with State Representative Todd Hunter, believe the increase is unfair.Hunter, whom attended the workshop gave his thoughts on the higher-than-most premiums that school districts along the coast, including FBISD pay. view article

Hurricane Beryl had the audacity to strike at the peak of Galveston’s tourism season, and on a Fourth of July weekend, no less. Officials have estimated that as many as 300,000 visitors were prematurely hastened over the I-45 causeway during the later hours of July 7. view article

Dozens of towering pine trees have long been a signature of Sinclair Elementary School, a 65-year-old campus nestled in Houston's Timbergrove neighborhood. The majority of those trees have come crashing down in recent months, with many being toppled by the derecho windstorm on May 16 and more falling during Hurricane Beryl last Monday. The downed trees destroyed most of the 16 temporary buildings utilized by the school, according to Sinclair PTO president Kim Ludlow, who said a playground structure and campus garden also were significantly damaged. view article

PISD remained closed until July 15, according to a social media post from the district. PISD also had the second session for multiple summer school programs, including special education extended school year services, or ESY, scheduled for elementary, junior and high school from July 8-18, as well as high school credit recovery from June 24-July 11, according to the district’s website. view article

CenterPoint officials anticipate having power restored to 90% of affected customers Monday, a week after Hurricane Beryl ripped through the region and knocked out electricity for millions of Houstonians. Nearly 2 million affected customers’ power had been restored as of 6:20 a.m. Monday, while 264,768 remained without electricity, according to the energy company’s website. The company drew criticism from customers and government officials for its response time and communication issues. CenterPoint officials said in a statement they would conduct a thorough review of the company’s response. view article

Dozens of Houston ISD campuses sustained damage from Beryl, and more remain without power on Friday, the district says. According to HISD, at the beginning of the week, a majority of campuses didn’t have power, and about 70 are still experiencing outages at this time. view article

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is urging the Department of Justice to make a decision on whether former Santa Fe ISD police officer John Barnes is entitled to certain federal benefits. Barnes was the first to confront the gunman during the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018. view article

Summer school was suspended this week in Houston's largest school district, which like much of the city is trying to recover from Hurricane Beryl. Houston ISD said Friday the "overwhelming majority" of its 274 campuses lost electricity on Monday, when Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane and blew through the region while causing multiple deaths, widespread flooding and damage to trees, structures and infrastructure. Roughly 70 of its schools remained without power as of Friday morning, the district said. view article

Beryl power outage updates: Hundreds of thousands of CenterPoint customers won’t have electricity until next week CenterPoint Energy estimates that hundreds of thousands of customers will remain without power into next week. As of Friday morning, 877,000 households and businesses it serves lacked electricity. Across the state, more than 1 million businesses and households across several counties still lacked electricity as of Friday morning. The longer-lasting outages were likely to be in the hard-hit areas of Matagorda County, Brazoria County and parts of Galveston County, along with some pockets elsewhere, said Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs for CenterPoint, at a Public Utility Commission of Texas meeting on Thursday. view article

Gov. Greg Abbott wants an investigation into why more than 2 million Texans lost power after Hurricane Beryl barreled ashore Monday and why up to one-fourth of them might have to wait until next week before electricity is fully restored. "What I'm going to be doing immediately is instructing the Public Utility Commission to undertake an immediate study to find out why this is repeatedly happening in Houston, Texas," Abbott told Bloomberg TV in an interview from Asia where he is on an extended trade mission. "They should not be losing power." The target of Abbott's ire was CenterPoint Energy, an electricity transmission company that serves the Houston area where the outages have been concentrated. view article

More than 870,000 CenterPoint customers were still without power four days after Hurricane Beryl struck the Texas coast, according to the company's website Friday morning. In an update Thursday night, the company said it expects to restore power to 80% of affected customers by the end of the day Sunday. view article

We regret to announce that due to prolonged power outages at more than half of our summer school campuses, we are canceling all summer school classes and summer activities on Thursday, July 11, 2024, and Friday, July 12, 2024," the district wrote in an email to parents. "We have been in regular communication with CenterPoint, and it is clear they will not be able to retore power to our schools quickly enough to allow us to cool campuses and provide students a safe and comfortable learning environment." HISD will also close its Summer Meal sites this Thursday and Friday. The district plans to return to usual operations by Monday, July 15. view article

Houston Mayor John Whitmire on Wednesday offered a sharp critique of CenterPoint Energy's ongoing repairs in Southeast Texas, where more than 1 million residents remain without power more than 48 hours after Hurricane Beryl's landfall in Texas. "[CenterPoint] needs to do a better job," Whitmire told reporters after a Wednesday city council meeting, according to the Houston Chronicle's Abby Church. view article

Across southeast Texas, residents and officials are assessing the damage and beginning the recovery process. Happening now CenterPoint expects to restore power to 750,000 customers by Sunday Matagorda County was "hardest hit" by Beryl, Patrick says Outages make it hard to discharge hospital patients, leading to backups Hurricane Beryl death toll rises to 10 Power restoration could take days and summer temperatures are rising Federal disaster declaration approved, Patrick says Texans begin to assess damage and plan clean-up efforts after bruising storm How to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning from generators during power outages What should I do after a hurricane hits? Beryl makes landfall in Texas as Category 1 hurricane view article

A 30-foot garage structure, dismembered into rubble. An RV, tipped over. The last vestige of a boat dock, sitting in a front yard. People love Sargent, a town on the Gulf Coast, for its beach homes and friendly atmosphere. But days after Hurricane Beryl tore through communities along the coast and further inland, snatching trees out of the dirt and knocking out power for millions of Texans, Rod “Doc” Pierce, a 70-year-old handyman with a cigarette and a cup of vodka, reached back to his days on the battlefield to relay what he saw: “It looks like Vietnam after a bomb raid,” he said on Wednesday. Pierce lives on an RV site that saw water rise to hip-level during the storm, which slammed Texas as a Category 1 hurricane early Monday. Since then, he has had no power and no idea of when it would come back. It was so hot inside his RV without air, he said, that he slept on a chair outside overnight on Tuesday. view article

Acting Governor Dan Patrick released a lengthy statement debunking the president’s claims that he could not contact Texas leadership about providing federal disaster aid following Hurricane Beryl’s destruction. After President Joe Biden granted Patrick’s request for a major disaster declaration yesterday—which is required for Federal Emergency Management Agency aid—he accused the acting governor of being “unreachable.”  view article

Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough said power restoration in the county is progressing, but Entergy officials say it could take several days to repair damage from Hurricane Beryl.  Entergy Texas storm crews have restored power to more than 70,000 customers late Tuesday after heavy rain and strong winds from Hurricane Beryl caused widespread outages across the area. CenterPoint has restored electricity to more than 850,000 of the more than 2.2 million customers that lost power during the storm. view article

A fire and two accidents that set off sprinkler systems at three different schools at the end of June led the Boerne Independent School District Northwest of San Antonio to suspend their normal procurement process for large purchases in order to quickly start on repairs. view article

School closures will stretch into Tuesday for many of southeast Texas' K-12 districts and higher education institutions as the region recovers from Tropical Storm Beryl.  Several of the area's schools and colleges reported minimal damage but remained with intermittent or no electricity after Beryl moved through the area on Monday morning and afternoon. The storm, downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane, landed midmorning near Matagorda Bay before traveling north and hammering Houston and its suburbs with rain and high winds. view article

Two people died in Harris County after trees fell on residences. Beryl is bringing strong winds and heavy rain as it moves northeast through the state. view article

The Houston region’s death toll from Hurricane Beryl has risen to four, with city officials confirming two more deaths related to the storm.  Investigators determined a house fire that killed a man early Monday likely was caused by lightning from the storm. A civilian employee of the Houston Police Department was found dead in a submerged car in the floodwaters of Houston Avenue, near City Hall. view article

An elevated weather station near the Houston Metro (located at an elevation of 226ft - so fairly high up there) has gusted to 81 mph at 6:15am. Anyone in a high-rise in the Metro, please do not go out on balconies and stay away from windows. This Post is from about 1 hour ago.

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More than 530,000 CenterPoint Energy customers are without power Monday morning as Beryl pushes through Southeast Texas.  If new estimates from ERCOT are correct, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick say Texas needs “an immediate review of all policies concerning the grid.”  With the state facing another round of extreme heat, recent polling revealed that most Texans believe an electrical grid failure could happen again this summer.  ---- Beryl reached Texas shores around 4 a.m. Monday morning as a category 1 hurricane, with wind gusts reaching up to 89 mph and maximum sustain winds hitting around 80 mph according to Matt Lanza of Space City Weather. Beryl reached Texas shores around 4 a.m. Monday morning as a category 1 hurricane, with wind gusts reaching up to 89 mph and maximum sustain winds hitting around 80 mph according to Matt Lanza of Space City Weather.  view article

Before dawn on a fall day in 2022, Texas air analysts approached a mobile monitoring van parked on the edge of Odessa in West Texas. They were hit with the stench of rotten eggs, the telltale sign of hydrogen sulfide. The invisible poisonous gas had seeped in, saturating the van. Breathing it in, the state workers grew sick: racing heartbeats, headaches, nausea. Their equipment had picked up what internal notes later would call “insanely high” levels of gas in the neighborhood. The analysts fled. view article

Tomball ISD says vandals caused significant damage to Creekside Park Junior High, forcing the board of trustees to pass a motion for the superintendent to execute a contract for emergency repairs in order for the school to be ready for the upcoming school year. view article

The latest rounds of storms that have swept through East Texas early Wednesday morning has led to further power outages and continues to complicate restoration efforts. Smith County emergency personnel responded to 27 weather-related calls over night after the latest storms. A shelter remains open in Bullard for people who have suffered property damage and/or power outages. Bullard Intermediate School, located at 218 School House Road, is open for those who need a place to go. Electrical providers have struggled to restore and maintain customers power on throughout the relentless weather events the past couple of weeks. At last check, providers in East Texas were reporting over 80,000 outages, the majority of which are coming out of Smith County. view article

Element Fuel Holdings LLC is spending between $3 and $4 billion on the project, which will produce more than 160,000 barrels per day of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from shale oil production, according to a report by the Houston Business Journal.  "Since no one's built a refinery in 50 years, there's probably a better way to do it. Let's optimize it," Element Fuels founder and co-CEO John Calce told the business outlet.    The refinery will be located in the Port of Brownsville and constructed in three phases. The first construction phase includes building a naphtha hydrotreater and reformer, which is expected to be operational by 2027. Element will also build a power plant that uses hydrogen and natural gas to produce energy and include carbon capture and storage to reduce the facility's carbon footprint.  view article

The Texas Legislature created the court last year, with proponents saying it would increase efficiency and opponents arguing that it was an effort by Republicans to circumvent Democrat-dominated courts. view article

For schools in the first two counties from the Gulf the Property insurance news has been good. We have seen mostly rate discounts up to 10% with improvements in coverage. And just this week we received a renewal for a Dallas area district with a 14% Property rate reduction and a 6% Casualty increase. view article

The Jefferson ISD Board of Trustees recently chose to table a proposal on student UIL insurance bids in an effort to ensure coverage meets the district’s needs. The presentation of insurance bids with regards to students who are participating in UIL events as given by the JISD Business Manager Michael Wood at a regularly held school board meeting on May 14. The companies who provided bids included Health Special Risk (HSR), Texas Kids First, and Monarch Management/Players Health. view article

Belton ISD confirmed to KWTX that some of their facilities sustained damage from the May 22 storms. The district says their biggest concern is addressing roof damage and water leaks. Additionally, Belton ISD says fences, outdoor lights, rooftop HVAC systems and outdoor equipment were impacted by strong winds. Repairs have begun on the most immediate needs and Belton ISD says it will take weeks to work through the repair process. view article