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As Fifth Ward resident Pat Cole sits on the porch of her home Saturday afternoon, a neighbor strolls past, a towel around his neck to soak up his sweat.

“How are you doing?” the neighbor calls.

“Hot,” Cole answers, without a moment of hesitation.

But the 72-year-old says she’s better off on her porch than inside her sweltering home, which has been without power for six days since Hurricane Beryl pummeled the Houston region Monday. The deadly storm knocked out power to 2.2 million CenterPoint Energy customers and sent water gushing through Cole’s living room ceiling.

As of Saturday afternoon, CenterPoint, the Houston region’s primary energy provider, had returned electricity to nearly 1.7 million customers. But as more homes are brought back online, a smaller share of residents, like Cole, are bracing for their struggles without power to stretch well into next week.

Some neighborhoods will likely not see power restored until Friday, July 19, according to CenterPoint, as systems must be “rebuilt” in areas with the most extensive damage.

Cole’s neighborhood is estimated to stay dark until Wednesday. She’s stopped calling CenterPoint to complain, saying she can’t get through to anyone that will answer her questions.

“Guess there’s nothing to do but pray I survive,” Cole said. “It’s pitiful. People die because of this.”

Anxiety-inducing estimations

In the days since Beryl slammed the region, CenterPoint has taken blows from residents and political leaders. The company has faced widespread criticism of their preparation for Beryl, and accusations that it has been disorganized and inefficient in restoring electricity.

The company has 13,000 crews working on restoration efforts, 11,000 of which are from outside of Houston, a spokesperson said. Crews are being deployed from 18 staging sites across the region —the most robust response to a storm in the company’s history.

“We know how tough these past several days have been for our customers and our entire team is determined to restore power as safely and as quickly as we can,” Lynnae Wilson, a CenterPoint Vice President, said in a statement Saturday. “We are committed to getting the lights back on for those customers who are not yet restored.”

However, frustrations have mounted with the company amid a growing wait for power to be restored. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said he expects a review of their Beryl preparations and response once restoration is fully complete. The Texas Public Utilities Commission, the state’s utilities regulator, told the company Thursday it must communicate better with its customers.

It took until Saturday morning for CenterPoint to post restoration estimates for all customers, a source of irritation for some while they remained in the dark about how long they’d be without electricity.

But for residents who now know they could have days more to wait, the estimates do not provide much relief.

Fifth Ward resident Roger Casas Borjas has two big problems with his estimate of receiving power next Wednesday. He can’t buy groceries to stock the fridge for his house of five men, and the hot nights in his house have been impossible.

“Everything we have in the fridge has all gone to waste,” Casas Borjas said in Spanish. “Because of the electricity, at night we can't stand the heat, we are struggling. We have to stay outside in the truck. It can be dangerous.”

Bracing for six more days

On Saturday morning, Victor Martinez clocks in his twentieth hour of cleaning up the mess Hurricane Beryl left in the yard of his Lake Jackson home. He estimates it will take another four or five days to tidy the debris and tree limbs.

And maybe by the time Martinez’ yard is clean, his power will be back on.

CenterPoint estimates that Martinez won’t have power until Thursday, July 18. His Brazoria County neighborhood is one of the closest in CenterPoint’s service area to where Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday morning, making the impact especially destructive.

Streets are littered with uprooted trees and toppled utility poles lay flat in flooded ditches along Highway 322 — a casualty of winds over 107 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

“It’s just a part of living out here,” Martinez says with a shrug, before hauling yet another fallen branch to his burn pile. “We’ve gotten used to it.”

But still, his wife Maria adds, “It’s exhausting.”

A few streets over, Jack and Rhonda Robertson chipped away cleaning the mess of trees Beryl left in its wake.

Jack wakes up at 5 a.m. each day to sit in the long line at the gas station for fuel. If the couple’s power is out until next Thursday, as CenterPoint predicts, fuel to run his generator will cost him roughly $500.

“I don’t know why it’s taking them so long, with all the people they got over here,” Jack said, gesturing to the line of utility trucks down a nearby street. “Still … They have a process. I know some of them are working 16 hour days.”

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