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Acting Gov. Dan Patrick promised a review of CenterPoint Energy’s preparations for Hurricane Beryl and encouraged the company to work as quickly as possible to restore power to those without as temperatures climb across the Houston region.
Patrick, the state’s lieutenant governor filling in while Gov. Greg Abbott is out of the country, fielded a series of questions about the massive number of outages and the company’s lack of an estimate for when repairs will be completed during a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
“CenterPoint will have to answer for themselves if they were prepared and positioned,” Patrick said. “Their company is responsible for that.”
Paul Lock, manager of local government relations for CenterPoint, said Tuesday afternoon that he “can't speak” to Patrick's statements and declined to comment further.
Officials with the company have said the intensity of the storm in the Houston area was stronger than they expected. Patrick said there should have been no surprises based on the forecast he was looking at before the storm made landfall early Monday.
“Any thought that people were surprised that the storm might come to Houston is shocking to me,” Patrick said.
At its peak, 2.7 million people were without power from the storm on Monday. That number dropped below 2 million Tuesday afternoon, but roughly 1.75 million of those are CenterPoint Energy customers.
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The heat index in Houston is expected to reach 105 Tuesday and is forecast to be 103 on Wednesday. The heat index is how hot it feels when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature.
The state is prioritizing the restoration of electricity to those without power and opening cooling centers across the storm’s path. Once restoration is completed, Patrick said he expects a report on the company’s preparations and response and will take action based on the report’s findings.
“If CenterPoint was or was not (prepared), we’ll find out later, but that’s on them,” Patrick said. “The tail of the tape is how fast we get power back.”
In the meantime, Patrick said he granted waivers to the company to allow thousands more linemen to quickly respond and requested it and other electricity providers “pull out all the stops” to restore power as quickly as possible.
As work on repairs continues and cleanup begins across the region, federal disaster aid is likely to follow close behind.
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Patrick said President Biden has granted his request for a federal disaster declaration to help the state respond to the effects of Hurricane Beryl.
The declaration will uncork millions of dollars in federal aid to reimburse residents and local governments for costs incurred by the storm.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, urged the region to “rebuild in a way that is smart,” such as hardening power infrastructure and continuing to lobby for construction of the “Ike Dike.” The Ike Dike is a proposed coastal barrier intended to protect the Houston-Galveston area from hurricane storm surge. The idea was proposed by a Texas A&M-Galvston professor after Hurricane Ike hit the region in 2008.
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