Generator shortage hampers Houston’s response to power outages

The day after Hurricane Beryl hit Houston, the city closed nine of its fire stations due to lack of power. More than 175 sewage pumping stations were without power, forcing the city to run generators to keep sewage flowing. And the city opened only one cooling center Tuesday morning, as power outages and a shortage of generators limited the city’s response to a heat advisory as nearly 2 million people in the region were without power.

Beryl highlighted Houston’s extraordinary lack of preparedness to respond to massive power outages, largely due to a lack of available generators. And she revealed how a major American city, with a global footprint, was able to remain paralyzed after a storm without having suffered the effects of a much more powerful hurricane.

“As we go through this period, we certainly need to focus on preparing for the next incident,” Mayor John Whitmire told city department heads at a briefing Tuesday afternoon.

The hurricane made landfall early Monday morning as a Category 1 storm. It buffeted Houston with winds of more than 90 mph and left 2.7 million people without power across the region at its peak.

Despite its relative lack of intensity, the storm disrupted life in Houston for much of the past 48 hours.

At a briefing Tuesday afternoon with department heads and acting Texas Gov. Dan Patrick, Whitmire said the generators were a “critical need” for the city.

Throughout the meeting, Whitmire praised the response of his department heads and city employees despite the circumstances, but said the city’s preparedness needs to improve before the next disaster strikes.

A rotating team of department heads described many of their facilities going without power as part of efforts to expand the city’s limited supply of generators and obtain new generators to keep them running.

How serious is it?

The firefighters from the nine fire stations were housed in fire stations with electricity.

A drinking water pumping station in Acres Homes was powered by a generator and was considered a priority by CenterPoint Energy, which operates most of the electrical transmission lines that run through the city.

There were 179 sewage pumping stations without electricity, and the system was kept operational by moving available generators from one station to another as needed.

The majority of Houston Police Department patrol stations are running on generators, HPD spokesman John Cannon said Tuesday night. The outages have not impacted HPD’s response time, he added.

“It’s time for us to find a solution so that when the next storm hits, we’re prepared and can respond,” said Randy Macchi, chief operating officer of Houston Public Works.

CenterPoint Energy, which provides electrical infrastructure to much of the city, sent nine generators to Houston on Tuesday, said Brad Tutunjian, the company’s vice president.

Since the storm, the utility has been criticized for its preparations and response as millions were left without power and temperatures soared Tuesday. It also could not provide an estimate of when restoration will be complete, citing the need to first conduct an assessment of damaged lines. Tutunjian said the utility hopes to have that assessment completed by Wednesday.

Restoring power to necessary municipal facilities is a priority for CenterPoint, Tutunjian said, but it’s unclear when those repairs will be completed.

Local and state leaders spent much of Tuesday urging CenterPoint to accelerate its work.

Patrick and Whitmire both said they have been in constant communication with CenterPoint since the storm to demand power be restored as quickly as possible, but have not directly criticized the company.

“The city doesn’t run CenterPoint, but we’re all in this together,” Whitmire said.

As of Tuesday night, just under 1.4 million CenterPoint customers were still without power. The company has pledged to restore power to 1 million customers by the end of the day Wednesday.

The work allowed the city to open five new cooling centers by the end of the day Tuesday. The county government and other outside partners were able to open additional cooling centers, which you can find here.

Whitmire blamed the city’s lack of generators on his predecessors.

“This is not the first time that cooling centers have not worked, whether it’s a library or a multi-service center,” Whitmire said. “I find it incomprehensible that a police station or a fire station would not have a backup generator, but that’s what we inherited and that’s what we’re here to fix.”

During the city council’s budget adoption last month, the lack of generators at some city facilities was a frequent topic of discussion. Several council members pointed out the lack of generators at some of the city’s multi-service centers and asked that funds be found in the future to purchase them.

Whitmire echoed the statements at the time, but most of the city’s record fund balance at the time was used to cover the city’s budget deficit, which has only grown due to the passage of a $1.5 billion back pay settlement and a contract with the Houston firefighters union.

Houston’s generator shortage is not unique.

Several Harris County facilities and offices remained closed due to a lack of power, and a backup generator at Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Hospital failed Monday night, causing the medical center to lose power for a period of time, County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Tuesday.

Harris County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Mike Lee said Beryl’s winds caused at least one substation to be relocated to a mobile home and deputies to be reassigned to guarding facilities containing evidence or weapons.

Not all of the department’s buildings — some of which are decades old — have generators, or ones powerful enough to power air conditioners.

Those issues did not impact deputies’ ability to respond to calls after the storm, Lee said.

Lee said he hopes funds from a successful 2022 public safety bond will be spent on upgrading the facilities.

Hidalgo said incoming aid from the federal government could help the county purchase generators and other supplies to prevent future outages.

At Tuesday afternoon’s briefing, Patrick suggested working with Whitmire and other big-city mayors to lobby the legislature to equip more Texas cities with generators in case of disasters.

“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have generators in fire stations and pump stations,” Patrick said. “This is the 1920s mentality, we really need to do this.”

Reporter Eileen Grench contributed to this article.

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