Houston area faces sweltering temperatures as 1.3 million homes remain without power after Beryl disaster

According to PowerOutage.us, more than 1.3 million customers in Texas, mostly in the southeast part of the state, remained without power as of Wednesday evening, including 1.1 million CenterPoint Energy customers.

In an update Wednesday evening, CenterPoint said it had restored power to more than 1 million of its 2.26 million customers affected by Hurricane Beryl.

The utility company plans to restore power to an additional 400,000 homes and businesses by the end of the day Friday and to another 350,000 by the end of Sunday.

The prolonged power outage, combined with sweltering temperatures after the hurricane, has sparked frustration among area residents, prompting Houston Mayor John Whitmire to criticize the power company on Wednesday, saying it “needs to do a better job.”

With millions without power, Houston residents will now face a third straight day of sweltering temperatures, with the National Weather Service issuing a heat warning for Thursday.

The agency warned that the heat index – a measure of how hot it actually feels – in the region could be in the range of 100 to 106 degrees Fahrenheit and could pose a particular threat to people without electricity or access to air conditioning.