93-year-old woman’s death amid sweltering heat at independent living facility has son calling for changes to protocol

KINGWOOD, Texas – A local man is calling for changes to protocols at an independent living facility in Kingwood. It’s where he says his mother died early this morning during extremely hot conditions.

The power at The Terraces was knocked out during Hurricane Beryl and hasn’t been restored.

Jonathan Sturgis loved and adored his 93-year-old mother, Barbara Sturgis.

“Wonderful lady. Best mom you could have, a lot of people say that. She’s been through a lot,” he said.

Most recently, Jonathan says his mom was subjected to sweltering heat living at The Terraces.

She died this morning as other residents were being voluntarily evacuated. Jonathan says he has concerns about how the facility’s management company, Frontier Management, handled the situation.

“No communication before the storm hit, no communication during the storm, and we got one email on Wednesday, two days after the storm hit,” he added.

He says this is a copy of the email that partly reads: “Our generator continues to run select lighting and power in both dining rooms and the kitchen. We have air conditioners and fans in place.”

“Went up there and had lunch with her [his mom] on Tuesday, and when I entered the facility, it seemed like it was pretty reasonable considering they were on a backup generator. Temperatures were a little bit elevated but under control,” Sturgis said.

But he says that wasn’t the case by Thursday.

“By Thursday morning my mom passed away, I got up there 9 a.m. in the morning, and I immediately noticed right away the building was significantly hotter,” he said.

When KPRC 2′s Deven Clarke asked if he felt residents should’ve been evacuated sooner, Jonathan’s response: “Yes. Absolutely no doubt. No doubt at all.”

92-year-old Bob Burgess also lives at The Terraces.

“It was hot no question, that’s why they had to evacuate because it was having an effect on elderly people,” Burgess said.

Burgess says his main frustration lies with CenterPoint which says it prioritizes power restoration for “facilities vital to safety health and welfare,” but so far, Burgess says CenterPoint hasn’t shown up there.

“The situation seems to be, have been poorly handled by somebody. It took a long time for not much to happen,” Burgess said.

We reached out to Frontier Management with questions about possibly making changes to their communication and evacuation protocols. Someone from corporate said they would pass our message along but so far; we have not heard back.

We also reached out to CenterPoint and while we haven’t heard back, according to CenterPoint’s restoration tracker, the facility is in blue which means an assessment has been completed. Still no word on exactly when power will be restored.