HOUSTON, Texas – Houstonians are becoming impatient as more than 1 million CenterPoint customers wait for their power to be restored after Hurricane Beryl ripped through the area, leaving significant damage.
Customers are going on day four of no power with temperatures in the Houston area reaching the mid-90s Thursday afternoon.
Centerpoint Energy said as of Thursday morning, they had restored power to more than 1.1 million customers and expects to have an additional 400,000 customers restored by Friday, July 12, and a further 350,000 customers by Sunday, July 14.
“Hurricane Beryl caused significant structural damage across CenterPoint’s service area, including along the coast where parts of the electric system will need to be rebuilt. The hardest-hit areas include Brazoria, where the hurricane made landfall, Matagorda and up the I-45 corridor to the Woodlands. Trees across the Greater Houston area also contributed heavily to the outages as they were vulnerable due to significant freezes, drought and heavy rain over the past three years. In the hardest-hit areas, customers could experience prolonged outages,” CenterPoint said, in part, in a statement.
Frustrated Houstonians decided the best way to get their message to CenterPoint was to paint an image on the side of the I-10 and Sawyer Street in graffiti, and now it’s catching a lot of attention.
“We understand how difficult it is for our customers to be without power, particularly in this summer heat,” said Lynnae Wilson, Senior Vice President, Electric Business. “Having substantially completed our damage assessment and restoration of customers impacted by circuit-related outages, our crews are now focusing on repairing more localized damage, including in the hardest-hit areas. We know that our customers are counting on us, and we are committed to working as safely and quickly as we can until every last customer is back on.”
CenterPoint said they have hired an additional 12,000 frontline workers from across the country to help restore power.
In the meantime, CenterPoint has released its restoration status tracker, which is set to provide estimated restoration time for Houston area neighborhoods that are still without power.
Several customers expressed to KPRC 2 Reporter Re’Chelle Turner that the tracker was confusing and not accurate. Turner spoke with the Senior Vice President of Operations for Centerpoint and asked him about the restoration map.
“We have an entire team behind the scenes that’s focused on the accuracy of that map. You know, we produced that as a tool for all of our customers to use during the derecho and see it as a best practice, and then something that we really want to use, going forward to keep everyone fully informed. And so, you know, while there are instances where that may be the case, which is typically driven by more localized outages that are below the circuit level, what we want customers to know is that we do know about you. So even if you’re out of power and it shows in the green, we know about you, and we’re going to get you restored,” VP Darin Carroll said.