A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.

Brett Coomer/AP

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Brett Coomer/AP

A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.

Brett Coomer/AP

HOUSTON — As the Houston area works to clean up and restore power to hundreds of thousands after deadly storms left at least seven people dead, it will do so amid a smog warning and scorching temperatures that could pose health risks.

National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Chenard said on Saturday that highs of around 90 degrees (32.2 C) were expected through the start of the coming week, with heat indexes likely approaching 100 degrees (38 C) by midweek.

“We expect the impact of the heat to gradually increase … we will start to see that heat risk increase Tuesday into Wednesday through Friday,” Chenard said.

The heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when humidity is combined with the air temperature, according to the weather service.

“Don’t overdo yourself during the cleanup process,” the weather service’s Houston office said in a post on the social platform X.

In addition to the heat, the Houston area could face poor air quality during the weekend.

Heavy rainfall was possible in eastern Louisiana and central Alabama on Saturday, and parts of Louisiana were also at risk for flooding.

The Houston Health Department said it would distribute 400 free portable air conditioners to area seniors, people with disabilities and caregivers of disabled children to contend with the heat.

Five cooling centers also were opened — four in Houston and one in Kingwood.

Hundreds of thousands remain without power

A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

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A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

The widespread destruction of Thursday’s storms brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds tore through the city — decimating the facade of one brick building and leaving trees, debris and shattered glass on the streets. A tornado also touched down near the northwest Houston suburb of Cypress.

More than a half-million homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity by midday Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. Another 21,000 customers were also without power in Louisiana, where strong winds and a suspected tornado hit.

CenterPoint Energy, which has deployed 1,000 employees to the area and is requesting 5,000 more, said power restoration could take several days or longer in some areas, and that customers need to ensure their homes can safely be reconnected.

“In addition to damaging CenterPoint Energy’s electric infrastructure and equipment, severe weather may have caused damage to customer-owned equipment” such as the weatherhead, which is where power enters the home, the company said.

Customers must have repairs completed by a qualified electrician before service can be restored, CenterPoint added.

High-voltage transmission towers that were torn apart and downed power lines pose a twofold challenge for utility companies because the damage affected transmission and distribution systems, according to Alexandria von Meier, a power and energy expert who called that a rare thing. Damage to just the distribution system is more typical, von Meier said.

How quickly repairs are made will depend on a variety of factors, including the time it takes to assess the damage, equipment replacement, roadwork access issues and workforce availability.

The storm caught many off guard

Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.

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Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.

David J. Phillip/AP

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez reported late Friday that three people died during the storm, including an 85-year-old woman whose home caught fire after being struck by lightning and a 60-year-old man who had tried to use his vehicle to power his oxygen tank.

Houston Mayor John Whitmire previously said at least four other people were killed in the city when the storms swept through Harris County, which includes Houston.

School districts in the Houston area canceled classes Friday for more than 400,000 students and government offices were closed.

Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles said Saturday that he hoped to reopen schools on Monday, but that is dependent upon the restoration of electricity in school buildings.

“If a school doesn’t have power, it will remain closed,” Miles told reporters during a tour of the heavily damaged Sinclair Elementary School.

Whitmire warned that police were out in force, including state troopers sent to the area to prevent looting. He said the speed and intensity of the storm caught many off guard.

Noelle Delgado, executive director of Houston Pets Alive, said she pulled up at the animal rescue on Thursday night and found the dogs and cats — more than 30 in all — uninjured, but the building’s awning had been ripped off, the sign was mangled and water was leaking inside.

She hoped to find foster homes for the animals.

“I could definitely tell that this storm was a little different,” she said. “It felt terrifying.”

State and federal recovery assistance is on the way

In light of the storm damage, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Whitmire both signed disaster declarations, paving the way for state and federal storm recovery assistance.

A separate disaster declaration from President Joe Biden makes federal funding available to people in seven Texas counties — including Harris — that have been affected by severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding since April 26.

Sir Anthony O’Reilly, who has died at the age of 88 after making and losing one of Ireland’s biggest fortunes, was a rugby star who became one of his country’s most celebrated businessmen, philanthropists and raconteurs.

He first came to prominence in the business world as the creator of the successful Kerrygold marketing campaign for Irish dairy products in the early 1960s. But he was already a familiar figure from his dazzling performances on the rugby field. He was capped 29 times for Ireland between 1955 and 1970 and also played for the British Lions.

O’Reilly, who was better known as Tony even after being knighted in 2001 for his services to Northern Ireland, was born in 1936, the son of a senior civil servant. He had a conventional Irish middle class upbringing in Dublin, but it took an unconventional turn when, towards the end of his schooldays, he discovered that his parents were not married to each other. His mother had simply taken O’Reilly as her surname by deed poll. There being no divorce in Ireland, his father was still legally married to another woman by whom he had three children.

After this information became public in a 1990s biography, some speculated that O’Reilly’s unusual background could have driven him to achieve the success that he found in both sport and business.

Whatever the mainspring of his talents, O’Reilly deployed his unusual qualities of intelligence, determination and stamina, coupled with humour and charm, to considerable effect. He began his business career as a management consultant with clients including a maker of garden gnomes whose problems later provided him with a rich store of anecdotes for the many after-dinner speeches he was invited to give.

His first executive role was in Dublin in the early 1960s when he was put in charge of An Bord Bainne, a new government organisation for promoting Ireland’s dairy industry. O’Reilly created a viable production and marketing strategy and, aged 26, propelled Irish butter and cheese into international markets with the launch of Kerrygold.

When a board member protested that there were “no cows in Kerry”, O’Reilly replied, by his own account, that the British housewives the brand was targeting did not know that.

The acclaim for this achievement prompted the Irish government to ask him to take on the job of rescuing the state-owned Erin Foods, which was making heavy losses in the mid 1960s. He prudently refused to do so unless he could also run Erin’s profitable parent company, Irish Sugar.

Erin was to be the key to the next three decades of his business life. Looking for an international partner to improve its distribution and credibility in the UK, O’Reilly set up a joint company with Heinz. The US ketchup maker soon asked O’Reilly to become its UK managing director.

Over the next two decades, O’Reilly rose to the top of Heinz, becoming chief executive in 1979 and, in 1987, its first non-family chair. He transformed the company’s sales and profits, and became its largest individual shareholder, but its stock was falling by the time he retired in 2000 as consolidation among rivals left Heinz in the industry’s second tier.

His early success at Heinz had given O’Reilly the financial resources and contacts required to launch an investment company in Dublin in 1971. Through this he was able to pursue a parallel business career in Ireland as he shuttled between Heinz’s Pittsburgh headquarters and Castlemartin, the art-filled stately home on the River Liffey where Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton were among his guests.

The most successful of his ventures was the newspaper group, Independent News & Media, where he bought effective control for £1mn in 1973 and which developed extensive interests in the UK, France, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

O’Reilly bought Waterford Wedgwood in 1990, refinancing and restructuring the Anglo-Irish crystal and china company and hailing Waterford crystal as one of the four great Irish brands, alongside Guinness, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Kerrygold.

In 2000 he told the Financial Times of his ambition to build Waterford Wedgwood into a global luxury goods group to rival Gucci or Richemont. He poured much of his fortune into the effort, only for the indebted group to fall into receivership in 2009.

That same year he lost a fierce battle for control of INM to Denis O’Brien, the Irish telecoms tycoon, costing him the dividend income his newspapers had once provided. Pursued by creditors, he sold Castlemartin and other prized assets but by 2015 the man reputed to have been Ireland’s first billionaire was declared bankrupt.

It was a jarring fall for someone once known for his philanthropy. Most notably, O’Reilly had created the Ireland Fund which became a major conduit for channelling finance into constructive community projects on both sides of the Irish border.

O’Reilly was married twice. He had six children by his first wife, Susan. His second wife, Chryss, whom he married in 1991, was a member of the leading Greek shipping family of Goulandris. A noted horse breeder, she died last year.

On Saturday night, Simon Harris, Ireland’s taoiseach, described O’Reilly as “a giant of sport, business and media” who left “permanent legacies in all three”.  

O’Reilly himself was fond of quoting the sportsman CB Fry’s dictum: “It is incumbent upon you to be a whole man, to be an all-rounder”. It was an epithet he lived up to.

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Arizona’s Family is learning more about the victims in the hostage, baby shot, officer-involved shooting, standoff, and fire situation in Surprise from the mother’s best friend.

Linda Ogle says her friend Allie was doing all she could to get out of a domestic violence situation, and no one ever expected it to escalate to this extreme.

In one day, Allie lost her home and all of her belongings, and she nearly lost her 6-month-old baby, Jaxson.

“Evil. I don’t have any other explanation besides he’s evil,” said Ogle.

Ogle calls it a scene out of a horror movie. Allie and Jaxson are living an unimaginable nightmare after police say 51-year-old Todd Marchetti caused a series of tragic events.

“There’s a lot of fear. She was really afraid of him,” said Ogle.

Marchetti is Jaxson’s father and Allie’s boyfriend of a year and a half. Detectives say Marchetti broke into a home in Surprise around 3 a.m. Friday and held Allie and Jaxson hostage.

Ogle says Allie recently moved in there with her parents to try to get away from Marchetti’s abuse, but he was stalking her.

“He used an ax to get through one of the windows,” said Ogle. “He brought duct tape and ropes and different forms of pliers and a couple different butcher knives.”

The plan was to torture Allie for days while her parents were away for the weekend, according to Ogle, and in the process, she says Marchetti shot the family dog. She says they all went to the vet, but Allie couldn’t escape then.

Ogle says Allie convinced him to let her talk to a construction worker after they got back to ask for help fixing the window he broke. That crew called 911, and then police say Marchetti shot his son.

“She saved both of their lives and I’ve told her that multiple times. She said ‘Oh, well I should have just taken Jaxson out of the house with me’ and I said if you would have picked that baby up and tried to walk out of that door with him he would have opened fire on both of you and neither of you would be here right now,” said Ogle.

Ogle says it’s a miracle Jaxson is alive. She says he’s had two surgeries so far, and doctors expect him to pull through.

“He heard Allie’s voice yesterday and opened his eyes. He wiggles his toes. He grabs my finger,” said Ogle. She’s been by their side in the hospital ever since this happened.

Police say after Jaxson was rescued by tactical teams and taken to the hospital, Marchetti refused to come out, and there was a standoff for hours.

Then, a fire started and destroyed the home. Ogle says Allie’s childhood home burned down, too. “He wanted to make her relive her trauma and that’s exactly what he did,” she said.

On Saturday, investigators say they found Marchetti’s remains in the rubble. They believe he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“There’s a huge part of her that wishes they could have had the family that she wanted to have,” said Ogle.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help them rebuild their lives and recover during this time. If you would like to donate, click/tap here.

There are resources available for domestic violence survivors. For more information, click/tap here.

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