More than 4,800 inmates at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center went without air conditioning for days after a violent storm knocked out power across San Antonio, forcing the jail onto backup generators that could keep the lights on but not cool the building. Deputies handed out containers of ice water and large fans to affected units while roof leaks and spotty power delayed inmate intake, according to The Cool Down.
The jail relies on electricity for lighting, ventilation, communications, electronic security systems and daily operations, per the same report. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told WOAI / News 4 San Antonio that backup power was enough to keep lights on but not to run building-wide cooling, and that storm-related roof leaks combined with limited generator capacity slowed booking operations as deputies struggled to keep the laptops used for intake charged.
Generators Couldn't Handle the Heat
The outage came right as Texas jail regulations require indoor temperatures to stay between 65 and 85 degrees in occupied areas, a standard set under 37 Texas Administrative Code sections that govern climate control at county detention centers, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. At the time of the outage, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office said there was no estimate for when electricity service would return and had not identified which jail operations were affected, per News 4 San Antonio's August 29 reporting cited by The Cool Down.
Full municipal grid power wasn't restored to the jail until Sunday morning, August 30, following an on-site inspection the day before by Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, according to KSAT. Sakai visited the facility in person on Saturday before county leadership confirmed operations had returned to normal.
A Storm That Followed 12 Days of Triple-Digit Heat
The severe weather that triggered the outage hit San Antonio on Friday, August 28, with straight-line wind gusts reaching 75 to 80 mph and 1.69 inches of rain, ending a 12-day stretch of triple-digit temperatures, according to Atma Energy. The downburst knocked out power to more than 112,000 customers at its peak and prompted CPS Energy to field over 600 downed-wire reports.
Citywide, more than 100,000 CPS Energy customers lost electricity on August 28 as the storm tore through San Antonio, The Cool Down reported. San Antonio police also investigated two storm-related drownings tied to the same weather system, including a 46-year-old woman swept away in San Pedro Creek and a man in his 50s found near Woodlawn Park, according to the City of San Antonio, with first responders conducting multi-day searches following sudden flash flooding downtown.
Council Members Press CPS Energy Over Restoration
The scale of the outages has drawn political scrutiny. Three San Antonio City Council members, Sukh Kaur, Edward Mungia and Teri Castillo, filed a request on September 8 seeking a formal review meeting with CPS Energy executives and city managers after thousands of Westside residents endured multi-day power outages, per the San Antonio Current. The council members asked for a breakdown of how restoration decisions were made.
Texas Health and Human Services has also stepped in, authorizing Bexar County SNAP recipients affected by the August 28 blackouts to request replacement benefits through September 17 for food spoiled by prolonged power loss, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Those requests are being processed through 2-1-1 and local HHS offices. Separately, Hoodline previously reported that Governor Greg Abbott formally requested a U.S. Small Business Administration disaster declaration for Bexar County on September 11 after damage assessments confirmed widespread uninsured storm losses.
An Already Strained Facility
The blackout hit a jail already under strain. The Bexar County Adult Detention Center operates near its 5,000-bed capacity, a crunch that has pushed the county to spend millions of dollars transferring hundreds of overflow inmates to Kerr and Burnet counties in 2025 and 2026, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Housing those inmates out of county costs taxpayers between $65 and $80 per person daily.
The facility also recorded 85 in-custody deaths between 2020 and 2025, along with additional 2026 fatalities tied to medical emergencies, suicides and cellmate violence, the Express-News reported, prompting local media to build an independent tracker monitoring the jail's safety compliance. Power failures at jails like Bexar County's threaten public safety on top of those existing vulnerabilities, underscoring why the days-long generator dependence drew such close attention from county leadership and state regulators alike.
