HOUSTON – CenterPoint Energy provided an update on the company’s preparation efforts in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi ahead of Tropical Storm Francine.
Locally in the Houston area, the forecast now calls for Francine to make landfall well into Louisiana, reducing our impacts here.
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Nevertheless, CenterPoint also distributes natural gas in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to the company’s coverage map.
“We are a multistate utility, we are a significant electric provider her in the greater Houston area, but we also have over a million gas customers in Texas as well as hundreds of thousands of gas customers in Louisiana and Mississippi,” said Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Office with CenterPoint, Keith Stephens.
After Hurricane Beryl, Stephens said the company has been taking steps to improve reliability of the electric system in the Houston area.
“We’ve replaced over 1,000 wooden poles with fiberglass poles that are more storm resistant. We’ve also cleared 2,000 miles of vegetation from our lines in the greater Houston area, we’ve also added 300 devices which increases the reliability of our systems,” he said.
Darin Carroll, Senior Vice President of Operations, said right now, the company has activated 1,300 vegetation workers with 600 being local workers and 700 being from mutual aid. In addition, 1,850 local distribution workers are ready to respond if they are needed.
1,500 additional support workers were also activated, but CenterPoint says they decided to release 1,000 so they could be available to other agencies that may need them in the path of the storm.
“We made that decision in an informed way using damage models that we have developed, we’ve been tracking those damage models through this entire event,” Carroll said.
The company also continues to communicate with government agencies in all three states ahead of the storm.
Tony Gardner, Vice President of Customer Experience at CenterPoint, said 3.8 million communications have been sent to electric and gas customers either by email, phone, or text as Francine heads toward the coast. 820,000 of those communications have been specifically to gas customers.
Gardner reminds the public in affected areas to call 811 before digging or clearing areas after the storm. He also says if you smell gas or suspect a leak to leave the area immediately and call CenterPoint and authorities.