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Houston power outages could last for days after Hurricane Beryl

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HOUSTON — Power outages affecting hundreds of thousands of people in the nation’s fourth-largest metropolis could last for days, the region’s power company warned, as sweltering heat increased in the wake of Hurricane Beryl.

About 1.8 million utility customers were without power Tuesday morning amid calm, sunny weather and rising temperatures, more than 24 hours after Beryl made landfall southwest of Houston, according to utility company CenterPoint Energy. The storm brought more than a foot of rain to the region, dumping on already saturated ground, and powerful wind gusts toppled trees onto power lines and buildings. More than 2.2 million CenterPoint customers lost power because of the storm, among the roughly 2.7 million customers who were without power across Texas.

As cleanup efforts continue and authorities assess the storm’s damage, the power company said it expects to restore power to 1 million customers by the end of the day Wednesday, while hundreds of thousands more are facing a heatwave without electricity. The National Weather Service warned that for those without air conditioning, conditions could become dangerous, with temperatures expected to reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) amid intense humidity.

“Heat index values ​​are expected to reach around 106 degrees, and these values ​​could become dangerous following Hurricane Beryl,” the Houston Weather Service forecast office said in social media posts. “Take precautions in your recovery efforts.”

The outages affected police and fire stations, a city animal shelter and the Houston Convention Center, which served as a mass shelter during previous storms, Mayor John Whitmire said Monday. CenterPoint said Monday night it had deployed mobile generating units to an emergency center and a hospital and plans to deploy more in the coming days.

“We have been closely monitoring the projected path, intensity and timing of Hurricane Beryl for many days, but this storm demonstrated the unpredictability of hurricanes by unleashing a powerful storm on our service territory and impacting many lives,” Lynnae Wilson, CenterPoint’s senior vice president, said in a statement. “We know we have an important job to do for our customers who depend on us, especially during the hot summer months.”

On social media, Houston residents eager to get more information about the power restoration work said they were using an app from the fast-food chain Whataburger to get a sense of the extent of the outages.

A map of the chain’s dozens of Houston-area locations showed the vast majority were closed Tuesday morning. The few that were open were on the outskirts of the city, mostly clustered in the city’s north and west neighborhoods.

“Well, our app has a use we didn’t think of!” Whataburger replied to a customer on X, formerly Twitter. “We hope you and everyone else are doing well!”

Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.

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