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In Texas, natural disasters increase domestic violence risks

After Hurricane Harvey and Winter Storm Uri, domestic violence calls dropped immediately because of outages but in the days that followed, they rose.

By Lisa Woelfl, Greg Morton and Jessica Klein, The Fuller Project
A San Marcos neighborhood is blanketed with several inches of snow as a massive winter weather system causes power outages across Texas on Feb. 15, 2021.

Michelle Abdelnoor poses for a portrait on Oct. 22, 2023, outside her apartment near Houston. Winter storm Uri in February 2021 trapped her inside the Houston home of her abuser for five days.

Disasters can isolate women

Christina Allen stands outside the Family Time Crisis and Counseling Center in Humble, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2023. In the five days when winter storm Uri trapped thousands of Texans in their homes and cut off electricity in February 2021, Allen, the center’s CEO, said not a single woman tried to get to the shelter. But as soon as the power came back on, she said, "hotlines were ringing off the hook.’’

Storms disrupt protections


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