HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Over 800,000 CenterPoint Energy customers are still without power four days after Hurricane Beryl ripped through southeast Texas.
CenterPoint, the largest energy provider for the area, says crews are working 16-hour shifts — and apparently getting threats.
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In a post on social media, the company asked the public to keep distance from the crews and allow them to keep working.
“Safety is our number one priority. We have received numerous reports of threats being made to our employees and crews,” CenterPoint wrote.
According to CenterPoint’s Outage Tracker, over 870,000 customers were still in the dark on Friday morning, and 1.3 million customers had been restored since the storm. CenterPoint declared that, with 2.26 million customers impacted, this is the largest outage in the company’s history.
Customers can check the company’s online Restoration Map to get an idea of the repair progress in their neighborhood.
In some areas, customers can now zoom in on their neighborhood, click the color that highlights their area, and see an estimated restoration date. Some areas have estimations, while many others do not.
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In an update on Wednesday evening, CenterPoint said approximately 400,000 customers will be in the dark past Sunday. See the latest restoration data here.
The company said it will continue to update the map with estimated restoration dates throughout the day.
In an update on Thursday evening, CenterPoint said it expects to restore power to 80% of impacted customers by the end of the day on Sunday, July 14.
However, that still leaves roughly 400,000 customers who may be in the dark past Sunday.
READ MORE: 13 Investigates: CenterPoint admits ‘clearly more needs to be done’
In an interview with 13 Investigates, CenterPoint Energy admits not enough resiliency work was done heading into Hurricane Beryl.
CenterPoint said in areas with significant structural damage, customers could experience prolonged outages while crews work to install new distribution poles, overhead conductors, and other critical electrical equiment.
Meanwhile, CenterPoint’s CEO spoke for the first time since Hurricane Beryl in an exclusive interview with our partners at the Houston Chronicle.
He defended the company’s response to the massive power outage, highlighting they managed to restore 1.1 million customers within 48 hours, claiming that’s faster than what other companies have done in the past 10 named storms.
Wells did take ownership of doing better with communicating expectations with customers.
His comments come after Acting Gov. Dan Patrick demanded an investigation be done into CenterPoint and whether or not it was prepared for the storm.
RELATED: Lt. Governor Dan Patrick defends Beryl response and casts blame on Biden for slow federal aid
