More than 1M people still without power in Houston, Texas as officials demand answers
AUSTIN, Texas (KEYE) — As of Thursday morning, more than 1 million electricity customers in Houston are still without power after Hurricane Beryl hit Texas’ largest city on Monday.
The state's Public Utility Commission is demanding answers from power providers.
Long-time residents of Houston say they saw this coming. Hurricane Ike in 2008 did something similar, originally targeting South Texas and then swerving to the north and hitting Houston. They want to know why Centerpoint Energy didn't see it coming and plan accordingly. Now, the PUC wants to hear from Houston-area electric providers even as they struggle to get the lights back on after Beryl.
Centerpoint boasts they've restored electric service to more than 1.1 million customers since Monday, but their customer base is so huge that leaves another 1.1 million still in the dark and without air conditioning.
Centerpoint says it now has more than 12,000 outside personnel in Houston to help restore service. But critics note only a small fraction of the number were standing by to immediately roll in.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is leading the state's response to Beryl in the absence of Gov. Greg Abbott who is out of the country, was asked recently about the growing concerns. He said he's not looking for answers from Centerpoint right now. He wants them focused on getting power restored.
I'm not looking at what they didn't do, or should have done on Thursday or Friday or Saturday," he said. "I'm looking at what are they going to do now, and how fast are they going to get their crews out. Because now we're in the lifesaving business, we can do a post analysis of their success or their failures after we get the power back.”Centerpoint was originally mentioned in only one item in Thursday’s already-scheduled PUC meeting in Austin, but the agency tweeted out they were calling “utilities impacted by Hurricane #Beryl to appear at Thurs., July 11, 2024 Open Meeting to discuss preparedness and recovery efforts” and were "adding an emergency Item to agenda."
The post didn't mention Centerpoint by name, but they are by far the largest impacted utility in the region.
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