Pressure mounts to fix blackouts in sweltering Houston after storm Beryl

HOUSTON (AP) — Pressure mounted on Houston’s power company Wednesday as millions of residents remained without electricity nearly three days after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, raising questions about how a city accustomed to destructive weather hadn’t been able to better withstand a Category 1 storm.

Amid mounting frustration as Houston residents spent another sweltering day searching for places to cool off, refuel and grab something to eat, a CenterPoint Energy executive was grilled by city leaders who wanted to know why it was taking so long to get the power back on. Mayor John Whitmire told the company directly to do a better job.

“That’s the consensus of Houstonians. That’s mine,” Whitmire said.

CenterPoint Energy said Wednesday night that it had restored service to “more than one million of the 2.26 million customers affected by Hurricane Beryl in the first 55 hours of repair efforts and remains focused on restoring customers without power.”

“Based on continued progress, the company expects to have an additional 400,000 customers restored by the end of the day on Friday, July 12 and an additional 350,000 customers restored by the end of the day on Sunday, July 14,” the company’s statement said.

Beryl made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest category, but has been blamed for at least seven deaths in the United States: one in Louisiana and six in Texas. It had previously killed 11 people in the Caribbean.

But the storm’s most lasting impact for many in Texas was the power outages, which left the nation’s fourth-largest city stifled by hot, humid weather that the National Weather Service deemed potentially dangerous.

“Maybe they thought it wasn’t going to be that bad, but it’s had a tremendous effect. They have to prepare better,” said Carlos Rodriguez, a 39-year-old construction worker, as he picked up apples, oranges and packages of ready-to-eat meals at a distribution center. His family, with two daughters ages 3 and 7, was struggling, he said.

“We don’t have electricity, we go to bed late and I’m using a fan made from a piece of cardboard to give my daughters some relief,” Rodriguez said.

Hospitals were sending patients who couldn’t return home without power to a sports and events venue where space was set up for up to 250 people. By Wednesday afternoon, about 40 patients had arrived, with 70 to 75 on the way, according to Office of Emergency Management spokesman Brent Taylor.

As many as 2.7 million people were without power when the storm made landfall Monday, according to Power Outage.us.

By late Wednesday afternoon, 1.6 million customers remained without power in the Houston area, including 1.3 million CenterPoint customers.

Brad Tutunjian, vice president of regulatory policy for CenterPoint Energy, defended the company’s response, telling council members that more than 1 million customers already had power on Wednesday.

“For me, this is a monumental figure,” he said.

The company acknowledged that more than 12,000 workers it had called in to help with recovery efforts were not in the Houston area when the storm hit. Initial forecasts called for Beryl to reach shores farther south, near the Texas-Mexico border, before heading toward Houston.

The company did not ask workers from other companies and municipalities to prepare to “ride out” the storm, “because that is not safe,” he said, and that they had been asked to be nearby so they could arrive when the hurricane had passed.

Council members pressed Tutunjian, asking why the company, which has been in the Houston area for nearly 100 years, had not made efforts to trim trees during good weather or bury more cables. Tutunjian said the company has been installing underground cables in residential areas for decades.

This is also not the first time Houston has experienced widespread power outages.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who is in Asia on a trip to boost economic development, questioned why Houston has repeatedly suffered power shortages after bouts of severe weather. 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 look into that, as well as the preparations and response to Beryl.

Raquel Desimone, who has lived in the area since 2000 and experienced many storms, was shocked to have to search for electricity and shelter once again.

“I’ve been through Rita, Ike, Imelda and Harvey,” Desimone said. “For the infrastructure to not be able to withstand a basic storm, to go down in a Category 1, it seems a little crazy to me that I’m having to do this.”