HOUSTON – People in the Almeda Plaza neighborhood say they don’t want to hear apologies and promises from CenterPoint Energy. They say actions speak louder than words.
Since 86-year-old Julius Gordon Jr. got his power back on the day after our original story with him aired following hurricane beryl, its already gone out twice again. Once three days after it was restored, and then again today.
“I thought, is this retaliation?” Gordon asked jokingly. “let’s cut off Gordon’s electricity because he’s got a big mouth. Hey, but we have to cut off the other people too. That’s alright cut theirs off too, cut all 700 of them off.”
He makes fun of the situation to keep spirits high, but he knows it’s really no laughing matter.
“Seriously, it’s not a joke anymore,” he said.
He’s already had to throw away medicine that requires constant refrigeration and sometimes when there’s an outage, he has to take a device to the hospital to reconfigure it with the implanted heart monitor it correlates with.
“They can do better. They got to do better,” Gordon said.
Doing better is what CenterPoint executives promised during a recent hearing in front of the Public Utility Commission where one of the promises was to ensure vegetation surrounding power lines is better maintained.
“We’ve begun to use aerial resources whether they are helicopter, drone,” CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells said.
CenterPoint officials also said other changes are on the way, including bettering customer service.
“Looking at ways for customers to report and send photos and damage so that we can prioritize lines down and other safety related items that come up,” Wells said.
Both Gordon and his daughter, Denise Furlough listened to CenterPoint’s apologies and commitments to build the most resilient costal grid anywhere in the country. Both of them are skeptical.
“I will believe it when I see it. This is Houston. We have had hurricanes my whole life and I won’t even mention my age. They knew this last year, the year before,” Furlough said.
“Talk is cheap, and when you don’t follow up on your talk, it’s expensive to the customers,” Gordon said.
Gordon says he still won’t walk around his house without his flashlight even though his lights are back on now. Meanwhile, CenterPoint saying they plan to streamline the changes starting this hurricane season and continue to improve on preparations for future seasons.