Opinion: After Beryl: Houston’s tech isn’t ready

You know things are bad when the only way to find out if the power is back on in your neighborhood is to use the Whataburger app. But apparently, after Hurricane Beryl, that’s what you have to do, because CenterPoint’s outage tracking system hasn’t been working since the May derecho.

This is just one example of how poorly prepared the city is for even a modest Category 1 hurricane. Imagine if Beryl had 24 hours left to pass over the water and had made landfall as a major hurricane. How long would the city be without power? Weeks?

This might be barely tolerable if internet service was working, but for many, it isn’t, as outages from Xfinity and others have occurred across the region. The same can be said for cell service. Phone service has been spotty at best. Data streaming has been worse. When your power is out and your only lifeline is your phone, it’s unbelievable that in America’s fourth-largest city, you can’t hear me anymore.

Leaving aside the rather shocking press conferences at City Hall (why does the mayor feel the need to yell and say things like “this storm is going to kill”?) and the limited and radically non-specific “updates” from Southeast Texas’ primary electricity provider, the fact that we can’t get even the most basic digital devices back after the sun comes back out is incomprehensible.

In short: we are completely unprepared.

The warnings have been there for years, even decades. We are far from the catastrophic storm that prognosticators have been fearing since the beginning of this century, and yet we are still debating plans for a sea wall to protect the Port of Houston and the ship channel. Only a few of the post-Harvey flood mitigation changes have been completed, much remains to be done, and the money is still tied up in bureaucracy.

In the span of two months, we have had two storms that have caused days of power and cellphone outages. One lasted about 20 minutes. The other was a low-intensity hurricane with maximum winds of about 80 mph in most areas. This is simply unacceptable. If this had been a major Category 3 or 4 storm (God help us if it was a Category 5), it is hard to imagine how long it would take for our region to recover.

What will it take for leaders to finally recognize that this needs to be Houston’s first, second and third priority? Maybe if they don’t have power for a week, can’t make a phone call and have to go to a coffee shop to connect to the internet, they’ll take note, but we’re not suggesting you hold your breath.