(17 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Houston, Texas – 17 May 2024
1. Mid of a car sits under fallen bricks in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm.
2. Mid of recovery and clean-up workers near collapsed wall.
3. Mid of people around car.
4. Various of man securing covers to propane gas and stacking bottles on a shelf
5. Wide exterior shot of the building that a section of the wall collapsed
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Henley Brown, Propane delivery worker:
“It’s a brick building, and it, it knocked down. You can see the TV’s kind of hanging on the side. Luckily, there’s no explosion because I’m about to go grab some of the propane in there.
7. Mid of man loading propane gas cylinders onto a truck.
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Henley Brown, Propane delivery worker:
“So, that’s a, a load-bearing wall, right? It’s all brick. I hadn’t seen a brick building fall down like that here, you know. So, it’s a lot.
9. Various city workers trimming fallen trees
10. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Yesenia Guzmán, restaurant employee:
“Well, a lot of trees were down. The streets, the light poles were down, and it’s very ugly, it’s really very ugly downtown.”
11. Mid of parking lot covered by fallen bricks
12. Mid-workers cleaning up
13. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Yesenia Guzmán, restaurant employee:
“We don’t really know what’s going to happen. If they are going to pay us, but we don’t really know. We are just going to wait for them to let us know because there is no light where we work.”
14. Mid of parking lot is covered with fallen bricks in the foreground and workers cleaning in the background.
15. Mid of people inspecting damaged wall
16. Wide of building with a section of the wall ripped off by severe storm
STORYLINE:
Power outages could last weeks in parts of Houston after thunderstorms with hurricane-force winds tore through the city, an official said Friday, knocking out electricity to nearly 1 million homes and businesses.
“We are going to have to talk about this disaster in weeks, not days,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top elected official, said at a news conference.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire said four, and possibly five, people were killed after storms Thursday swept through Harris County, which includes Houston. Officials warned residents that it would be a slow cleanup and that some residents should brace to be without electricity for days, if not longer.
“It was fierce, it was intense, it was quick and most Houstonians didn’t have time to get themselves out of harm’s way,” Whitmire said.
He said at least 2,500 traffic lights were out and warned would-be looters that “police are out in force including 50 state troopers sent to the area to prevent looting."
The widespread destruction brought much of Houston to a standstill as crews raced to restore power and remove uprooted trees and debris. School districts in the Houston area canceled classed for more than 400,000 students and government offices were closed. City officials urged people to stay off roads, many of which were flooded or lined with downed power lines and malfunctioning traffic lights.
Whitmire called downtown “a mess” on Thursday and told people not to go to work Friday, unless they were considered essential workers.
At least two of the deaths were caused by falling trees and another happened when a crane blew over in strong winds, officials said. Whitmire said wind speeds reached 100 mph (160 kph) “with some twisters.” Whitmire said the powerful gusts were reminiscent of 2008’s Hurricane Ike, which pounded the city.
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