HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — More than 700,000 customers were without electricity Friday morning after severe thunderstorms that brought hurricane-force winds barreled through southeast Texas hours earlier.
After the storms passed, CenterPoint Energy confirmed to ABC13 that its downtown building and system had been damaged as a result Thursday.
“As the line of severe weather has made its way through our region, it is now safe for our crews to begin assessing damage but can confirm we’ve experienced significant damage to our system,” the power giant wrote in a statement.
At the time, CenterPoint said restoration efforts had already begun and would ramp up Friday morning.
The strength of the winds can’t be understated.
Some Houston residents told ABC News correspondent Mireya Villarreal that the winds sounded like a freight train coming through.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire drew a comparison to 2008’s Hurricane Ike.
As of Friday at 8 a.m., more than 728,000 customers were without power. Just over 93,000 customers had electricity stored within the past 24 hours.
Outages literally span all over: from downtown Houston to Spring Branch, the east side, including Channelview and Baytown, north around the Cypress area and west, including Katy.
You can keep up with outages and plug in an address using CenterPoint Energy’s outage tracker.
Whitmire warned that the outages are also affecting traffic lights. Power poles are down, and some of them are snapped in half.
If you are traveling in and out of Houston, you can check your flight on the National Airspace System Status.
MORE WEATHER COVERAGE:
Houston-area school and college closings and delays
ABC13 Weather Alert Day: Severe T-Storm Watch issued in SE Texas until 8 p.m.
This story comes from our news partner ABC13 Houston.
