More than 150 Texans died because of February’s winter storm, according to the latest data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
In its latest update, the state health agency said that 151 fatalities have officially been linked to the brutal storm, which knocked out power, heat and water to millions of Texans. That tally has grown by 40 since late March.
The number of deaths far exceeds those caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The National Hurricane Center reported 103 deaths from that storm, with 68 directly caused by the hurricane and 35 considered indirect.
Twenty-three of the reported winter storm deaths occurred in North Texas: 11 in Dallas County, three in Tarrant County, two each in Collin and Ellis counties, and one each in Grayson, Hunt, Kaufman, Lamar and Parker counties.
More than a quarter of the state’s deaths — 41 — occurred in Harris County.
The deaths occurred Feb. 11-March 5, and most were the result of hypothermia. Other causes include carbon-monoxide poisoning, exacerbation of chronic illness, falls, fire and traffic accidents.
The toll may yet grow as the state’s disaster epidemiologists continue their work. The Dallas County medical examiner’s office has said it is investigating 17 deaths as potentially storm-related, including three as the result of carbon-monoxide poisoning.
There are three main ways DSHS is notified of disaster-related deaths:
- Medical certifiers — doctors, medical examiners or, in some counties, justices of the peace — submit a form to the state that specifies that a death was related to the disaster.
- Medical certifiers flag a death record as being disaster-related.
- State epidemiologists match news reports of disaster-related deaths to death certificates.
It could take months to determine an exact number of deaths caused by the storm — and knowing whether some deaths were storm-related may remain impossible.
“We’ll probably never have a really accurate number,” Jeffrey Barnard, Dallas County’s chief medical examiner, has said.
Storm-related deaths by county
Aransas County: 1
Armstrong County: 1
Bandera County: 1
Bexar County: 9
Brazoria County: 1
Brooks County: 1
Cass County: 1
Cherokee County: 1
Clay County: 1
Coleman County: 2
Collin County: 2
Dallas County: 11
Ector County: 1
Ellis County: 2
Fayette County: 1
Fort Bend County: 3
Freestone County: 1
Frio County: 1
Galveston County: 8
Grayson County: 1
Hale County: 1
Harris County: 41
Henderson County: 2
Hill County: 2
Hopkins County: 1
Hunt County: 1
Kaufman County: 1
Kendall County: 1
Kerr County: 1
Lamar County: 1
Lavaca County: 2
Lee County: 1
Leon County: 1
Limestone County: 1
McLennan County: 1
Montgomery County: 2
Nacogdoches County: 4
Parker County: 1
Pecos County: 1
Rusk County: 1
San Saba County: 1
Schleicher County: 1
Sutton County: 1
Tarrant County: 3
Taylor County: 6
Travis County: 12
Trinity County: 1
Uvalde County: 1
Val Verde County: 1
Webb County: 1
Wharton County: 1
Wichita County: 2
Williamson County: 3
