CenterPoint linemen battle broken grid as Houston boils

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HOUSTON — Erick Trice knows the routine of disaster. The 55-year-old lineman is packing his bags. Maybe he’ll spend a little more time with his two adult sons before he leaves. “Go make some money,” his wife will tell him. He’s leaving his hometown of Evansville, Indiana, in his bucket truck.

As a lineman, Trice worked through three ice storms and two tornadoes, repairing electrical infrastructure and restoring power. When he got the call to help in the Houston area after Hurricane Beryl’s high winds wreaked havoc on the system, he said yes. Most people do, he said. Only an event like a wedding can interfere.

“We love helping people get their electricity back,” Trice said.

Trice is among thousands of power linemen working in Southeast Texas after wind, tree limbs and, in some cases, entire trees brought down lines and poles. Trice works as an employee for CenterPoint, the Houston-area utility that saw more than 2 million customers without power after the hurricane.

The failure of the electrical infrastructure to withstand the storm left Texans furious. Residents threw out spoiled food and slept in cars to try to protect themselves from the cold. CenterPoint struggled to communicate when power would be restored. A graffiti artist scrawled “CenterPointle$$” on a road. Someone placed skeletons next to a sign that read “Waiting for CenterPoint,” a Houston Chronicle photo showed.

The company is responsible for caring for the poles and lines that supply the region with electricity and now faces serious questions: Did CenterPoint trim the trees properly? Did it maintain and harden its equipment as it should? Many here think not. The CEO, in an interview with the Chronicle, defended the system, saying it worked as intended. State regulators have promised a full review.

The scale of the outage revealed a frightening truth: Electric infrastructure is vulnerable to storms that are likely to be stronger because of climate change, and it will take a lot of money to make the system resilient enough to withstand them. That puts residents at risk and places the onus of recovery — and even saving lives — on utility managers and linemen like Trice.

Trice had loved electrical work since he was a child. His uncle was an electrician and would sometimes take him with him when he worked on houses. He started out as an electrician, memorizing tools so he could pass them on to linemen. He learned to climb poles and went through an apprenticeship program that taught him how to handle dangerous wires.

With 31 years of experience in the industry, Trice drove about 850 miles to Texas on Tuesday. Or so he thinks: The days blur together. Since arriving, he reports to work at 6 a.m. at Sam Houston Race Park, where he eats a hot breakfast and gets his briefing. He takes maybe a 20-minute lunch break and eats dinner at the end of his 16-hour shift. He keeps working even when he’s tired, knowing he’ll rest at the end of the day, maybe in two weeks.

“We’re in storm mode and we’re still moving forward,” Trice said. “You get to the hotel, you take a shower and you pass out, and your alarm wakes you up, you get up and you go again.”

On Saturday, he worked replacing two poles that snapped in the northwest part of the city. He and his crew had to disconnect the wires from the poles, remove the old poles and install new ones. The process takes time because other workers have to find gas, water and sewer lines to make sure they don’t get damaged.

Power has been restored to 1.8 million CenterPoint customers since the hurricane struck, but about 450,000 were still without electricity Sunday morning, according to the utility.

Power line workers have faced the wrath of a frustrated community. Earlier in the week, a man allegedly threatened an electrician with an air gun or compressed air pistol, according to ABC 13. More than 100 power line workers were evacuated from a site after shots were allegedly fired at them, CenterPoint President and CEO Jason Wells said in a video released Saturday.

Trice said people have also thanked them and prayed for them. As he was driving his truck last week, he was afraid to look at a car next to him in case the driver wasn’t happy with his driving. But when he turned around, he saw a child holding a sign that said “thank you.”

Disclosure: Sam Houston Race Park is a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a full list of supporters here.

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