‘I pray I survive’: Some residents brace for days without power after Hurricane Beryl

As Fifth Ward resident Pat Cole sits on the porch of her home Saturday afternoon, a neighbor walks by with a towel around his neck to absorb his sweat.

“How are you?” the neighbor asks.

“It’s hot,” Cole answers, without a second’s hesitation.

But the 72-year-old says she’s better off on her porch than in her sweltering home, which has been without power for six days since Hurricane Beryl hit the Houston area Monday. The deadly storm knocked out power to 2.2 million CenterPoint Energy customers and sent water gushing through Cole’s living room ceiling.

As of Saturday afternoon, CenterPoint, the Houston area’s main energy provider, had restored power to nearly 1.7 million customers. But as more homes get back online, a smaller share of residents, like Cole, are bracing for their power-less struggles to extend into next week.

According to CenterPoint, some neighborhoods likely won’t see power restored until Friday, June 19, as systems need to be “rebuilt” in the most damaged areas.

Cole’s neighborhood is expected to remain dark through Wednesday. She stopped calling CenterPoint to complain, saying she couldn’t get through to anyone who could answer her questions.

“I guess there’s nothing to do but pray that I survive,” Cole said. “It’s pathetic. People are dying because of this.”

Since Beryl struck the region, CenterPoint has faced criticism from residents and political leaders. The company has been heavily criticized for its preparation for Beryl and accused of being disorganized and inefficient in restoring power.

The company has 13,000 crews working on restoration efforts, including 11,000 from outside Houston, a spokesman said. The crews are deployed from 18 staging sites across the region, the most robust storm response in the company’s history.

“We know how difficult these past few days have been for our customers, and our entire team is committed to restoring power as safely and quickly as possible,” CenterPoint Vice President Lynnae Wilson said in a statement Saturday. “We are committed to restoring power to customers who have not yet been able to do so.”

But frustration has grown within the company as the wait for power to be restored lengthens. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he expects preparations and the response to Beryl to be reviewed once the restoration is complete. The Texas Public Utilities Commission, the state’s utility regulator, told the company Thursday it needs to do a better job of communicating with customers.

It took until Saturday morning for CenterPoint to release restoration estimates for all customers, frustrating some as they remained in the dark about how long they would be without power.

But for residents who now know they may have to wait several more days, the estimates don’t provide much relief.

Roger Casas Borjas, a resident of the Fifth District, has two big problems with his estimate of electricity availability next Wednesday. He can’t buy groceries to stock the refrigerator in his five-man household, and warm nights in his house are impossible.

“Everything we had in the refrigerator was wasted,” Casas Borjas said in Spanish. “Because of the electricity, at night we can’t stand the heat, we have a hard time surviving. We have to stay outside in the truck. It can be dangerous.”

Preparing for six more days

Victor Martinez spent the last 20 hours cleaning up debris left by Hurricane Beryl in the yard of his Lake Jackson home Saturday morning. He estimates it will take him another four or five days to clear the debris and tree branches.

And maybe by the time Martinez’s yard is cleaned up, his electricity will be back.

CenterPoint estimates Martinez won’t have power until Thursday, July 18. His Brazoria County neighborhood is one of the closest in CenterPoint’s service area to where Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday morning, making the impact particularly destructive.

Streets are littered with uprooted trees and toppled utility poles lie flat in flooded ditches along Highway 322, battered by winds of more than 107 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

“It’s part of life here,” Martinez shrugs, before carrying another fallen branch into his pile of burned wood. “We’ve gotten used to it.”

But still, adds his wife Maria, “it’s exhausting.”

A few streets away, Jack and Rhonda Robertson were busy cleaning up the messy trees Beryl had left in her wake.

Jack gets up every day at 5 a.m. to line up at the gas station. If the couple doesn’t have power until next Thursday, as CenterPoint predicts, the fuel to run their generator will cost about $500.

“I don’t know why it takes them so long, with all the people they have here,” Jack said, gesturing toward the line of utility trucks on a nearby street. “Still… they have a procedure. I know some of them work 16-hour days.”

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