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Overview:
The weekend begins in Houston with more than 680,000 CenterPoint customers without power as the utility mobilizes 13,000 repair crews to continue restoring power.
On Sunday, frustrations continued to mount over the disjointed effort by CenterPoint Energy to restore electricity, with more than 268,000 customers living without power across the greater Houston region,
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday questioned CenterPoint's ability to operate a client base of 2.8 million customers, adding that its coverage area need to be reviewed. CenterPoint will face hearings next month to answer for its failings, from having sufficient crews in town before the storm to powering hospitals and other facilities.
Abbott said further investigations will determine if anyone died, as a result of the outage, and the failure to maintain electricity.
The public skewering comes as customers struggle through sweat, tears, anger to get power restored. Making matters worse, customers say they receive mixed messages from CenterPoint when they try to reach a live customer service agent.
“The communication by CenterPoint is at a new low,” Abbott said. “It has worsened.”
Customers agreed with that assessment.
“I've never seen it this slow,” Melissa Alvarado, of Freeport, said Saturday of the restoration effort. “We've never had it like this. There was nothing to do but sleep it off.”
Alvarado and her five children finally had power on Saturday, after nearly a week of living through the heat, humidity and the uncertainty of CenterPoint Energy's poorly executed restoration plan.
Alvarado is one of the luckier families to have electricity, almost a week after Hurricane Beryl slammed Houston and wiped out electricity to 2.26 million customers.
CenterPoint started Saturday morning with more than 680,000 customers without electricity. The number of restorations Saturday rapidly increased by the hour, according to its outage map, which has been criticized for its inaccuracies.
By Sunday night, CenterPoint's website indicated that just over 268,000 customers remained without power, meaning 411,000-plus customers across Greater Houston finally have electricity. The restoration numbers again accelerated on Sunday.
Repair teams continued to traverse the region as frustrated customers either flagged down repair crews for advice or continued to dial the utility for help.
Despite the growing pace of restorations, CenterPoint leaders say some customers could still be in for a days-long wait — the company estimates that some areas with more extensive damage could be without power through Friday, July 19.
Some customers have a more clear idea of when their power will return, while others are unclear how much longer they’ll remain in the dark. CenterPoint is still adding neighborhood-level restoration time estimates to their outage map, days after a bungled rollout that added to mounting frustration with the region’s primary electricity provider.
Customers have been able to reach a real person to voice concerns and report continued outages and downed lines - even as CenterPoint's new outage map incorrectly indicates a neighborhood or block as being energized. Callers should request a reference report number from CenterPoint, which logs the customer complaint and can be used for future calls.
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CenterPoint said some customers could be experiencing a “nested outage,” where their home is without power in an area that CenterPoint’s map shows as having electricity. CenterPoint does not provide an estimated time for restoration for nested outages, and it’s unclear how many customers are experiencing this. In some instances, trees have knocked down lines and damaged poles, which cannot be repaired by just sending a bucket truck, a mistake that has happened.
The frustration has even led to one arrest in Fort Bend County, where authorities arrested a man for pointing a gun at a repair worker, the county District Attorney's Office announced.
This week’s extensive and prolonged outages have spurred widespread criticism of CenterPoint’s preparation for Beryl and accusations that its response has been disorganized and inefficient. The Texas Public Utilities Commission, the state’s utilities regulator, urged the company Thursday to communicate better with its 1 million-plus customers still without power.
Should inclement weather hit the area, CenterPoint crews can typically keep working in the rain, but they must stop to take shelter if they see lightning until they decide it’s safe to continue, spokesperson Paul Lock said. Right now, there is no rain in the forecast until Friday.
Lock said the company brought in 1,000 more crews from outside of Houston Friday to assist with restoration efforts, Lock said, bringing the total number to 13,000. The crews are being deployed from 18 staging sites across the region, the most robust response to a storm in the company’s history.
“Everyone here is exhausted, but we'll continue to work around the clock to get everyone restored as quickly as possible,” Lock said Friday.
Jim McIngvale, aka “Mattress Mack” and the owner of Gallery Furniture, where Abbott hosted the Sunday press conference, said people had been coming into his store in tears to cool off. He also laid into CenterPoint.
“CenterPointless,” he said.
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