Power outages could last a week or more for 350,000 Texans after Beryl

The company said it expects to restore power to another 750,000 customers by the end of the weekend, leaving nearly 400,000 customers unlikely to have power restored within a week of Beryl’s arrival early Monday.

At least nine people have died in Texas and Louisiana after the storms, including people killed by falling trees, people drowned after being trapped in vehicles by rising waters, and people who were vulnerable when power outages cut off. There are now fears that more people will die as heat indexes reach triple digits.

Although cooling centers have opened across the region and the local bus authority will transport people there for free, Brian Murray, deputy emergency management coordinator for Harris County, said he is concerned some people will be stuck in their homes without power.

“We know there are residents in this situation, but we don’t know who they are or where they are,” he said. So far, the county has not received any reports of heat-related deaths, he added. “We hope that won’t be the case.”

The slow pace of restoring power shows how Beryl, despite being a relatively weak hurricane, wreaked significant damage on a landscape already strained and trees weakened by other recent storms. Along the coast, parts of the power system will need to be completely rebuilt, and damage was also significant in dense areas of Houston, CenterPoint officials said.

Entergy, which serves customers in parts of East Texas, reported 102,000 power outages as of midday Thursday, mostly in Montgomery County, just north of Houston. The company said it expected to restore all but 15,000 of the outages by Friday night, but that in some areas, power might not return until Saturday or Sunday.

According to PowerOutage.us, about 1.3 million utility customers were without power across Texas as of noon Thursday.

The power outages had major impacts in southeast Texas, where 160 boil-water advisories were in effect in eight counties and 135 wastewater treatment plants were offline, according to Nim Kidd, head of the Texas Department of Emergency Management. About a dozen hospitals were in a state of internal disaster, he said, meaning routine hospital operations are compromised.

The Houston area was under a heat advisory Thursday, with highs expected to be between 35 and 37 degrees and humidity that would make it feel up to 10 degrees warmer. Temperatures are expected to approach 37 degrees every day for at least the next week.

“This heat is especially dangerous if you are without power and doing heavy outdoor work,” the National Weather Service’s Houston weather forecast office warned. “Please stay hydrated and use generators safely.”

Harris County officials sent a wireless alert to residents Thursday, urging them to exercise caution when using portable generators, after fire stations reported an increase in calls related to possible carbon monoxide poisoning, Murray said. The hope, he said, is that utility crews will restore the outages as soon as possible.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who is traveling to Asia on an economic development trip and has left Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in charge, called Wednesday for an investigation into why the Houston area has repeatedly suffered widespread and long-lasting power outages.

Frustration with CenterPoint grew during just the latest power crisis — in May, a powerful storm known as a derecho also caused about 1 million power outages, some of which took six days to recover.

“It seems like they were maybe not as prepared as they should have been,” Patrick said at a news conference Thursday. “We’ll see later what the facts are.”

The utility said trees in the area “contributed significantly to the outages because they were vulnerable due to severe frost, drought and heavy rain over the past three years.”

“We understand how difficult it is for our customers to be without power, especially during this hot summer,” Lynnae Wilson, senior vice president of CenterPoint, said in a statement. “We know our customers are counting on us, and we are committed to working as safely and quickly as possible until every customer is back online.”