HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Over a million households have been left in truly miserable conditions without power for more than 48 hours after Beryl moved through southeast Texas.
A Heat Advisory has been extendedthrough at least Wednesday night with hot, humid conditions continuing.
According to CenterPoint Energy’s Outage Tracker, over 1.3 million customers are still in the dark, and there’re no specific timeline of when the power will be fully restored. At Beryl’s peak on Monday, over 2.2 million customers were without power — about 80% of CenterPoint’s customers.
Previously, CenterPoint said it aimed to have 1 million of those initial 2.2 million customers back online by the end of the day on Wednesday. The company said customers should expect a multi-day process to restore their electricity.
CenterPoint released a new map overnight that gives customers an idea of the work being done in their neighborhoods.
Click here to check your neighborhood’s status on the map.
The map doesn’t show when power will come back, but it does show areas across Houston highlighted in three colors.
- Green means power is back, though isolated outages to individual homes could remain
- Blue means crews have been assigned to restore the power and work is being done
- Orange means CenterPoint is still assessing damage
CenterPoint broke their restoration process down into five categories:
- Impact evaluation and resource mobilization – Crews begin assessing impact of damage and mobilizing local and mutual assistance resources.
- Critical infrastructure assessment – Focus on essential facilities critical to health and public safety.
- Community infrastructure assessment/repair – If your grocery stores, street lights and surrounding neighborhoods are without power, the problem may be at the circuit level, which supplies power to the largest number of customers.
- Neighborhood infrastructure repair – If surrounding neighborhoods are restored, but yours is still without power, the problem may be at the fuse level.
- Street infrastructure repair – Seeing lights on in your neighborhood, but you and your closest neighbors are still out? We’ve completed the fuse-level repairs, but there is a more isolated issue, such as a damaged transformer, that needs to be addressed.
CenterPoint plans to update the new map as it receives more information.
ABC13 was live at the Sam Houston Race Park on Wednesday morning, which is one of 17 CenterPoint staging areas across Houston. Countless trucks were lined up at the race park, with crews loading up and heading out to work for the day.
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While CenterPoint has brought in extra crews to help with repairs, with 12,000 workers spread out across the region, some Texas leaders are questioning the response and if the company did enough.
“If they made mistakes, and we don’t know if they did or not, that will be addressed by the PUC and the state legislature. That’s our job,” Acting Gov. Dan Patrick said, adding he wants CenterPoint to focus on restoring power for now.
One common criticism is that crews are sitting around for hours, waiting for an assignment.
A CenterPoint spokesperson said they know of at least three cases where that happened and have made changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“We’ve found it’s more productive if we do the assessment and then go out to where the need is, otherwise we’re just randomly just sending them out,” Paul Lock with CenterPoint said. “So, it’s painful for a day or two, but it’s more efficient in the long run.”
One thing you may notice is that your power may come back on, only to go right back off again. CenterPoint said that is because crews might have to take you back offline in order to help restore power to your neighbors.
If it comes back and goes away again, officials say it shouldn’t stay that way for long.
If you don’t have power, state officials are asking you do not call 911.
Patrick said on Monday, there were almost 16,000 calls to 911 about power outages.
If you are in the dark, you’re encouraged to call CenterPoint instead. Their number is 713-207-2222.
