At least 57 Texans’ deaths were result of winter storm, including 2 in Collin County

Dozens of Texans died as a result of last month’s brutal winter storm that knocked out power and water to millions of people across the state, according to preliminary data the Department of State Health Services released Monday.

According to the state, at least 57 deaths were attributed to the mid-February storm, with 25 of them in Harris County.

Only three of the deaths reported by the state were in North Texas; two occurred in Collin County and one was in Grayson County.

Those numbers are likely to grow: The Dallas County medical examiner’s office previously said that it was investigating whether 17 deaths were linked to the storm, including at least three potential deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Most of the 57 deaths verified as caused by the storm were the result of hypothermia, according to the state agency. There also were multiple deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning, falls, fire, medical equipment failure and traffic accidents.

The state agency said there are three main ways it is notified of disaster-related deaths:

• Medical certifiers — such as doctors, medical examiners or, in some counties, justices of the peace — submit a form to the state that specifies that a certain 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.

Determining exactly how many deaths were caused by the storm could take months, and in some cases it may not be possible to know whether a particular death was storm-related.

“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

Bandera County: 1

Bexar County: 1

Cass County: 1

Collin County: 2

Fort Bend County: 2

Frio County: 1

Galveston County: 1

Grayson County: 1

Hale County: 1

Harris County: 25

Hill County: 2

Hopkins County: 1

Kendall County: 1

Lavaca County: 2

Lee County: 1

Montgomery County: 1

Pecos County: 1

Rusk County: 1

San Saba County: 1

Sutton County: 1

Taylor County: 5

Wharton County: 1

Wichita County: 1

Williamson County: 1