Communities from Houston to New Orleans opened cooling centers to bring relief as steamy hot temperatures settled across a broad swath of the U.S. South on Saturday, and beachgoers fled a waterspout that swept ashore on a Florida beach.
Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, visited Perryton in the Texas Panhandle, where officials said more than 1,000 customers were left without electricity after a tornado killed three people late Thursday. The Perryton Ochiltree Chamber of Commerce said it would open a cooling center in the town of 8,000 people, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Amarillo, to counteract the effects of the high temperatures that followed the storm.
“At times of events like these, Texans come together,” Abbott told reporters as he signed a disaster declaration that he said would “trigger all the resources the state can bring to bear … to accelerate the ability to rebuild.”
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