A KXAN Austin report this week put a number on something most Texans already sense: more than 100,000 households across the state are heading into the back half of summer without functional air conditioning. That is not a statistic about poverty in the abstract. It is a count of homes where the next stretch of 105-degree days is a medical event waiting to happen.

What is actually at risk here

Heat kills more Americans annually than any other weather-related cause, and Texas concentrates that risk. The state's geography does the most damage in August, when overnight lows in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley rarely drop below 80°F, giving the body no recovery window. Without AC, a home that hit 95°F at 3 p.m. can still be 88°F at midnight.

The 100,000-household figure from KXAN covers people without any AC, but that number understates total exposure. It does not count households with broken or undersized units, households on prepaid meters who ration electricity, or renters whose landlords delay repairs. The real number of thermally stressed Texas homes in August is substantially higher.

ERCOT, the grid operator that manages roughly 90 percent of Texas's electricity, has added significant generation capacity since 2021. Recent ERCOT seasonal assessments show improved reserve margins compared to the years immediately following Winter Storm Uri. That is real progress. It does not eliminate the risk of localized outages during coincident peak demand, and it does nothing for the household that never had AC to begin with.

The exposure is concentrated but not exclusive. Older manufactured housing in West Texas and the Valley, urban apartments in Houston's less-affluent zip codes, and rural homes on fixed incomes show up repeatedly in heat-mortality data. But a working-class household in Austin whose central unit fails on a Friday afternoon in August faces the same biology, even if the surrounding context is different.

What we'd actually do

Get a window unit into any room that will be occupied tonight, not next week. A single 8,000-BTU window AC unit can cool a bedroom to survivable temperatures and draws roughly 700 watts, manageable on most residential circuits. If you do not own one, check Facebook Marketplace before buying new — there is always a supply of used units in Texas cities during August. A working room AC is emergency infrastructure, not a comfort upgrade.

Home Depot, Lowe's, and H-E-B (in larger stores) stock portable and window units through late summer. Call ahead before driving across town. Supply in Austin and San Antonio tightens quickly after any heat advisory.

Find your utility's bill assistance and loaner AC program before you need it, and tell your neighbors. CPS Energy in San Antonio, Austin Energy, and Oncor all operate some form of low-income energy assistance or AC repair/replacement program. The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs administers federal LIHEAP funds for cooling assistance; applications open on a rolling basis. These programs run out of money. The households most at risk are often the least likely to know the programs exist. If you are not personally in need, forwarding this to one neighbor who is counts as emergency preparedness.

Set a heat-check protocol for anyone in your network who lives alone. The CDC defines "heat check" loosely; make yours specific: a text or call by 10 a.m. and again by 4 p.m. on any day when the forecast high exceeds 103°F. If there is no response within two hours, go in person. This is not dramatic — it is the same logic as a carbon monoxide detector. Heat stroke progresses from confusion to unconsciousness in a timeframe that makes delayed response fatal.

Know your nearest county cooling center address before the next advisory, not during it. Every major Texas county opens cooling centers during heat emergencies. Travis County posts locations through Austin 311. Harris County uses its Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management site. Bexar County coordinates through the Metro Health department. Addresses and hours change year to year. Look it up now, save the address, and pass it to anyone in your household who might need it independently.

Audit your home's passive heat load this week. Close blinds and curtains on south- and west-facing windows before 10 a.m. A reflective window film applied to those exposures can reduce solar heat gain meaningfully and costs under $30 for a standard window. Attic insulation is the higher-leverage fix, but it is not a this-week action. Blocking direct sun is.

The bigger picture

Texas's heat exposure problem is structural: aging housing stock, a large uninsured population, and a climate that no longer treats August as the edge of its range. The grid is more robust than it was. Individual homes are not automatically safer because ERCOT added capacity.

The goal of household preparedness is not to build a bunker against catastrophe. It is to close the gap between the system's average performance and your household's specific vulnerability on a bad day. A working room AC, a neighbor's phone number, and a county cooling center address are not dramatic actions. They are the difference between a heat advisory and a heat fatality, and they cost almost nothing compared to the alternative.