HOUSTON – Centerpoint Energy’s latest update says the company expects to have 80% of impacted customers’ power restored by the end of the day Sunday. That will still leave a little more than 450,000 customers without power.
MORE: CenterPoint expects 80% of impacted customers to have power restored by Sunday
Many frustrated customers no longer trust the timelines CenterPoint is releasing and many of you are seeing posts online about out-of-town linemen just waiting at staging areas with no work orders.
We see the same posts and KPRC 2 is working to track down those people making the claims. On Thursday, a lineman at NRG told us there is a lot of waiting in mass outages. And that is normal.
He told KPRC 2 reporter, Rilwan Balogun they have to wait for other crews to finish damage assessments so they know where to go next.
“There’s a lot of hidden hazards too,” David Jones, the contracted lineman said. “So that’s why I’m saying we have to make sure everything is clear to work. Once we do the repairs, we have to double and triple-check it before we turn it on, because we don’t want to cause a house fire. Make sure everybody’s clear before we before we energize it.”
Many of you are saying that some of these linemen are saying that CenterPoint is still trying to negotiate how much they will get paid before they send them out to do work.
We are trying to find the actual linemen making these claims to speak with them directly. However, in the meantime, we did ask CenterPoint about this, and Thursday night, a spokesperson responded via email simply saying, “The information is not true.”