11 news at noon starts. Now. Now at noon, hurricane force winds rip through buildings and uproot trees. At least four people are dead after the storm and brick walls crumble in the face of ferocious storms. Right now, the clean up only just beginning and with hundreds of thousands of people in the dark, we are now facing a weekend of 90 degree weather and many of us could be without air conditioning. These storms pushed through the area with so much force. You could see the destruction left behind right now. National Weather Service crews are out surveying the damage as so many of us are picking up. We mentioned the deaths in this storm. Four have been confirmed and at least two of those deaths were caused by falling trees. This is video here showing one of those scenes on Avenue. Oh, this is in East Houston. According to Houston police, the victim was a 31 year old mother who had gone outside to move her car to a safer spot when the tree fell and killed her. One man was killed just a few blocks north of that scene. We're told the victim was an elderly man who was in the cab of a cement truck when the wind caused two cranes to fall on it. No one else was inside that truck or hurt inside that truck. Let's get a check on those power outages right now. More than 750,000 customers in the dark. This is according to power outage.us. Now, more on that part of the story in just a moment. But our live team coverage starts with 70 Whitfield who was at a briefing with Houston and Harris county leaders in the last hour. Stephanie, what did they have to say? For me, they know people want to know how long the power is going to be out, but they say it will take about 24 hours just to assess the damage. But they do want people to prepare to be without power for days, maybe even weeks. The National Weather service says straight line winds hitting 8090 MPH wreaked havoc on the Cypress area. Then through the city center, then southeast to the coast. As a result, Center point says 10 transmission towers were knocked down and so were a large number of power lines. Now, hundreds of thousands of people are without power and more than 2000 traffic lights are out in the city of Houston. Here's what mayor John Whitmire and Harris County judge Lena Hidalgo had to say this morning, it was fierce, it was intense, it was quick and most Houstonians didn't have time to place themselves out of harm's way. If you are tied into the transmission lines that fell those huge towers, we've seen them piled down. Imagine 10 of them in a couple of different places in the county that can take weeks to restore a center point official was at the press conference that just wrapped up. He said they just don't know which properties are tied to the transmission lines that are down, but they are working to get that information as quickly as possible. We're also told 4000 technicians from out of town are heading to the Houston area to help with repairs. Stephanie Whitfield Khou 11 news city and county leaders urging everyone to be patient. Stephanie thank you so much. A lot of information on power outages coming out of that briefing as well. We want to bring in Jason Miles. Now he is in East End with more information from Center point, Jason. All people want to know about that. Be patient. First of all, be patient. First of all, if you're without power, it may take a while before it's restored. I'm on Lockwood Avenue where neighbors, in fact, from a local church took matters into their own hands this morning, cutting up this oak tree that fell on a power line and not to mention neighbor's fence here causing a lot of damage right now. As Stephanie mentioned about 4000 utility workers on their way to Houston and Harris County to help the local crews restore power. In fact, we just saw a caravan of centerpoint trucks roll through this area. Meanwhile, we got an update from county officials and Center Point this morning, as we've mentioned at the peak of the outages, some 930,000 customers had no power, but it's still pretty bleak for many 740,000 outages as of around 10 o'clock this morning. But keep in mind, more than 70% of Centerpoint customers do have power. Now, it's difficult to keep track of all that because coincidentally, Center Point's outage tracker. How you keep up with outages has been on the fritz. We've got 10 transmission lines down across our footprint, seven of which are in Harris County. Um We hope to have our outage tracker back up and running soon, but this is gonna be a right now. We're looking at a multi day event and back here live on the east end. Folks kind of cheered when those center point trucks rolled through a few minutes ago. Again, these people are from a local church helping out neighbors because they say they haven't got any action from Center Point or city crews. Obviously, that's going to take some time despite their repeated phone calls. And I mentioned the outage map. It has been working sporadically since last night, but keep in mind points, downtown headquarters suffered a lot of damage as well. Not sure if that's connected to their apparatus as far as the outage map, that we will certainly keep on top of the outages and how they're being restored throughout the day for now. Reporting live from the east end. Jason Miles Khou 11 news. All right, Jason, thank you so much for that update. Be safe out there in the meantime, it is best to stay home today if you can. But if you, you have to leave the house, be careful. Mayor John Whitmire says more than 2500 traffic lights are not working and hey, here's a quick reminder. No signal light means lights will be treated as a four way stop. Also flashing red lights, traffic lights there, the light should be treated as a stop sign, flashing yellow means that drivers should proceed with caution only if traffic is clear. And one area that saw significant damage was downtown Houston. Take a look at this. This video shows windows knocked out of high rise buildings, broken glass all over the sidewalks and roadways and several downtown buildings had some major structural damage. Right now. City leaders are asking that you avoid this area. Our go loco joins us now from downtown to go. You've seen some cleaning up down there today? Yes, I have and a lot has changed within the last couple of hours since my last live report this morning. We know right now a few of these cleanup crews are wrapping up at least at this part of downtown Houston that's off of Dallas and Louisiana. However, if you take a look right above me here, you will see crews, they are working to repair the broken glasses in the sky bridge. They were just here actually further down. If you pan this way, our photojournalists know you can see right now that's a live look at them in that sky bridge working to repair the broken glass here, window glasses. Now, we also have video within the last 30 minutes, we've seen at least about a dozen street crew members working from what we can see to go ahead and sweep off that shattered glass off this intersection again of Dallas and Louisiana. We've also got video of people walking through the scattered glass on the street. This was earlier this morning. So people on top of cars driving through all of that glass, there are piles of it in chunks on the ground. People stopping to take pictures of the broken glass windows blown out from the high risers. Now, the strong winds last night really did a number to the buildings in this spot earlier. He ran into the zero sandwich shop owner who too walked through glass to check on his restaurant. It was intact but the businesses next to him, not so much from inside restaurants like neighboring restaurants, but some of their windows popped and there's customers running in for refuge. I just called all the employees and told them not to come in. Why was that important for you to do? Well, one half the staff uses the bus and trains and they're shut down again. Back out here live another live look at that sky bridge. You can see crews here actively working to repair the broken glass windows. We wanted to give you a better look once we figured out where they were, they moved from one point to the other. But back to that restaurant owner, he also tells me another reason why he decided to go ahead and keep his shop closed is he was really trying to listen to Mayor John Whitmire message to have people avoid downtown Houston at all costs. May are also stressing if you're a business owner, you have a business, tell your employees to stay home to keep them safe out of harm's way as clean up continues down here reporting live in downtown Houston, Uiko 11 news. Yeah, we know that can be extremely dangerous, especially after a storm like this. Thank you. Let's take a live look out there right now. The good news, the rain and severe weather, it's moved out. Yeah, that's a good news. Kim Castro is here now though. We are expecting a big warm up this weekend, but hundreds of thousands of people don't have power, which means no working ac and we're all asking each other, you know, first and foremost, are you ok? Is your family? Ok. Do you have ac because now is the time to make arrangements for this weekend as those temperatures are gonna start heating up. We're looking at morning lows, upper sixties to around 70 degrees and those daytime high temperatures low nineties, but we humidity, it's actually going to feel like the upper nineties. So, do you have that relative that has a generator that has a way to get air conditioning in their home? Call them up and ask them if you could stay with them through the weekend. At least as crews are working urgently to get power restored. We don't know how long it's going to be out today. Those temperatures feel comfortable because there's a lot of cloud cover out there and a nice cooler breeze streaming in upper seventies throughout the afternoon. But notice there might be some disruptions to clean up because there is a chance for an isolated shower. Here's a live look at radar right now. So some heavier rain pushing in for our far western counties. That's a sap out El Campo to Palacio to Wharton, Matagorda, Brazoria, seeing most of the rain along 288 a heavier downpour just moved through Angleton to Lake Jackson and then inside the loop, we're seeing some heavy rain picking up again closer to downtown and then along the beltway, a couple of streamer showers pushing through as well. This is going to be the set up throughout the afternoon. So I'm thinking from now till about four o'clock, we'll have showers focused along the coast that could lift into Harris County. So that's your heads up through the four o'clock hour. I'll be back to walk you through this evening and of course, the warm up that's coming when I see you in a couple of minutes, guys. All right. See you then, Kim. Now is the time to download that K two U 11 app if you haven't already and be sure to turn on the notifications. So we'll be able to send you the most important updates right to your phone.
