HOUSTON – Texas Governor Greg Abbott toured NRG Arena Monday to examine the 250 beds set up there for Houstonians who’ve been discharged from area hospitals but don’t have a safe place to go after Hurricane Beryl.
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The state set up the operation at NRG Arena to help with healthcare access and provide ready-made meals, water, ice, and shelter to those who lost power.
With Houston Mayor John Whitmire by his side, Abbott said Texas will continue to focus on assisting residents directly impacted by the storm and those who are still without power.
Abbott doubled down on his stance on demanding answers from CenterPoint Energy, stating that they have a deadline to give them information on their response or Abbott suggests issuing an executive order.
“If CenterPoint does not respond to my request, I will be issuing an executive order imposing, what I think, are the appropriate standards,” Abbott said. “The standards I want to impose on CenterPoint would be far more costly than what they may be coming up with. Separate from that, if they don’t comply with my request and refuse to work with them, we’re going to completely re-evaluate the current status of CenterPoint in our area.”
Abbott did not pull any punches Sunday afternoon in going after CenterPoint for their failures in getting the lights back on for Houstonians as well as hundreds of thousands of others in the area.
“The failure of power companies to provide power to their customers is completely unacceptable,” Abbott said.
Abbott, who is back in the state after an economic trade mission to Taiwan, South Korea and Japan last week, joined Lt. Governor Dan Patrick at a news conference Sunday afternoon at Gallery Furniture. The governor made it clear that hurricane season is far from over and CenterPoint will be required to immediately start addressing multiple key issues to avoid what has happened post-Beryl from happening again this hurricane season.
“I will give CenterPoint until July 31st to provide my office with specific actions that they will take, to address the following issues that focus on improving power reliability. #1 removal of any vegetation that threatens any power line covered in the geographic region covered by CenterPoint,” Abbott said. “CenterPoint must specify actions that it will take in the coming months that it did not take in Beryl that will reduce or eliminate power outages in the event of another tropical storm arriving at the gulf coast.”
Abbott described some of the other actions the state will require from CenterPoint.
“Regardless of the reason, CenterPoint did not have an adequate number of workers pre-staged to immediately address the power outage. So, my demand upon CenterPoint they must specify what actions they will take to pre-stage a sufficient number of workers immediately to any power outages,” he said. “We must know was CenterPoint protecting Texans or was it protecting its own pocketbook.”
Governor Abbott also has other action steps from CenterPoint that must be made between now and the 31st. He made it clear that if they don’t, the state will reevaluate CenterPoint’s presence in Texas.
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick says hearings will be taking place next month in Austin to further investigate as to why Houstonians were left in the dark for so long.
“A freight train is coming,” said Patrick adding “you better be prepared.”