Pressure Mounts on Houston Power Company to Quickly Restore Service as City Sweats After Beryl – 104.5 WOKV

Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest type, but it has been blamed for at least seven deaths in the United States – one in Louisiana and six in Texas. Earlier, 11 people died in the Caribbean.

However, the storm’s lingering impact for many Texas residents was the loss of power that left much of the nation’s fourth-largest city sweltering days later in hot, humid conditions that the National Weather Service deemed potentially dangerous.

“They thought maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, but it had a huge impact. They had to be better prepared,” said Carlos Rodriguez, 39, a construction worker, as he picked up apples, oranges and ready-to-eat meal packages at a food distribution center. His family, which includes two daughters, ages 3 and 7, was struggling, he said.

“We have no electricity, we go to bed late and I use a fan made from a piece of cardboard to give my children some relief,” Rodriguez said.

According to PowerOutage.us, power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers after the storm made landfall Monday.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 1.6 million customers were without power in the Houston area, including 1.3 million CenterPoint customers.

Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint’s vice president of regulatory policy, defended the company’s response to the City Council’s pointed questions and said more than 1 million customers had their power restored as of Wednesday.

“To me, I think that’s a monumental number,” Tutunjian said.

The company acknowledged that most of the 12,000 workers it had mobilized to help rebuild were not in the Houston area when the storm hit. Early forecasts called for the storm to make landfall much farther south, along the Gulf Coast near the Texas-Mexico border, before heading toward Houston.

CenterPoint is not asking freelancers from other companies and municipalities to position themselves upstream and “wait” during the storm “because it’s not safe,” Tutunjian said. Instead, they are being asked to be as close as possible to respond once the storm passes.

One of the biggest challenges in Beryl was restoring power after it was cut off by fallen trees and branches, Tutunjian said.

“When we have storms like this, with trees completely falling down…taking out our lines and poles, that’s when all the time comes into play to do restoration work,” he said.

But council members pressed why CenterPoint, which has been a fixture in the Houston area for about 100 years, hasn’t been more aggressive about trimming trees in calm weather or burying more power lines. The company has been burying new power lines in residential areas for decades, Tutunjian said.

Two city council members said they received a text message about a house burning after they reported a downed power line. The texts said firefighters said there was nothing they could do and that utilities had not responded. City Councilwoman Abbie Kamin called the extended power outage a “safety issue.”

This is not the first time the Houston area has faced widespread power outages.

In 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston Island as a Category 2 storm, causing flooding and wind damage in the Houston area. It knocked out power to about 2.2 million CenterPoint customers, according to the Harris County Flood Control District, which said 75% of power was restored within 10 days.

Houston was also hit hard in 2021 when the Texas power grid failed during a deadly winter storm that brought freezing temperatures, snow and ice. Millions of people were left without power and had to wait out the storm in freezing homes or flee.

Last May, storms killed eight people and left nearly a million customers without power.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who is currently in Asia on an economic development trip, has questioned why Houston regularly experiences power outages after heavy rains. In an interview with Austin television station KTBC, Abbott, who has been governor since 2014, said he would ask the Texas Public Utility Commission to investigate that, as well as the preparations for and response to Beryl.

Sharon Carr, 62, a lifelong Houston resident, was frustrated.

“Every little event affects us that way. It’s too windy, we don’t have power. It rains for a long time, we don’t have power,” Carr said. “And it takes three, four, five days for the power to come back on. Sometimes that’s too long for people who are sick, who can’t handle the heat or who don’t have transportation to get to the cooling centers.”

Raquel Desimone has lived in the Houston area since about 2000 and has experienced many storms. Yet she was surprised and frustrated to once again have to scramble to find electricity and shelter from the heat.

“I’ve dealt with Rita, Ike, Imelda and Harvey,” Desimone said. “The fact that the infrastructure can’t handle a basic storm and it’s a Category 1 storm seems kind of crazy to me to have to do that.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is acting as governor during Abbott’s absence, said Tuesday he would wait until recovery efforts are complete to focus on CenterPoint’s response and whether the company was ill-prepared.

“CenterPoint will have to answer for their actions, whether they were ready, whether they were in position. Their company is responsible for that. The state was in position,” he said. “I’ll tell you whether I’m satisfied or not when I have a full report of where their crews were when they were asked to come.”

___

Vertuno reported from Austin. Nadia Latham in Austin contributed to this report.