Houston City Council questions Whitmire storm resilience plan – Houston Public Media

Mayor John Whitmire was criticism of city services And CenterPoint preparedness for Hurricane Beryl, but the City Council asked him at Wednesday’s meeting: How prepared was his administration?

The mayor expressed frustration with the The city’s lack of preparation for stormsciting a lack of first responders and ambulances. He also said he would hold CenterPoint accountable for its failure to keep Houstonians powered after a Category 1 hurricane.

“I’m angry at the level of neglect at this point,” Whitmire said at last week’s city council meeting.

After thanking city employees, line workers and first responders who helped the city recover, council members asked how much preparation the Whitmire administration had done before Beryl hit the city.

“Certainly, if there had been a solid plan in place over the last four, eight, 10, 12 years, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Whitmire City Councilwoman Twila Carter said.

“We need a plan,” she continued. “We have a plan, but we need a plan that actually works.”

Wednesday was the second city council meeting where members discussed the widespread power outages, which are still affecting tens of thousands of homes. more than 33,000 homes on Wednesday afternoon who still have no lighting or air conditioning, marking their tenth day without electricity.

Whitmire defended his administration’s preparedness and said the city’s deficits are due to years of neglect.

“We have done everything humanly possible to respond,” the mayor said.

But council members, including Edward Pollard, asked him to assess his administration’s preparedness.

“You can’t say you’re well prepared and then go a week without power,” Pollard said, noting that Beryl was a Category 1 storm.

Pollard acknowledged the city’s room for growth and stressed there was pressure to improve quickly because “we know these storms are stronger, we know they’re more frequent.”

“I apologize to the public. You deserve an apology from your city for the way we’ve had to endure the last week,” he said. “We’re trying. There are things we’ve done well, but there are a lot of things we’ve failed at.”

Pollard, however, acknowledged the mayor’s efforts to seek help from other cities and states.

“We need our state partners,” Pollard said. “And that’s why I’m glad to see the mayor holding press conferences with the governor, the lieutenant governor and other state officials, because we need their help, and I appreciate them coming out and wanting to find ways to help us.”

Last week the city received 100 police officers from across the state to relieve some of the workload on the Houston Police Department. Houston also received 25 additional ambulances from the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

Whitmire said the storm exposed the city’s “vulnerabilities,” but the problems ran deeper than when his administration took over.

“Who can imagine a fire station not having backup?” Whitmire said of the 10 fire stations that were unable to operate after Beryl because they had no power or generators. “That’s what a lot of us inherited, what we’re committed to fixing.”