Nearly a week after Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas, about 270,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area are still without electricity.
Governor Greg Abbott announced on Sunday that he is calling for an inquiry into the utility company’s response to the storm and information regarding its storm-preparedness measures.
Speaking at his first press conference regarding Beryl after returning to the state from an economic development trip to Asia, Abbott stated, “To state the obvious, power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes.”
The fourth-largest city in the country is served by CenterPoint Energy, whose slow recovery has raised questions about whether the utility was adequately prepared for the storm that left people without air conditioning in the intense summer heat. Since the storm struck on July 8, about 2 million customers have had their power restored.
Beryl destroyed trees, snapped branches that smashed into power lines, and toppled transmission lines in the Houston region.
Abbott stated that there are still months remaining in hurricane season and that CenterPoint has until the end of the month to provide details about its plans to minimize or completely stop power disruptions in the event of another storm.
According to him, part of that will entail the business offering thorough plans to get rid of any vegetation that poses a risk to electricity lines.
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Abbott added that prior to the storm, CenterPoint lacked “an adequate number of workers pre-staged.”
CenterPoint stated that providing “power to the remaining impacted customers as safely and quickly as possible” was its first priority after Abbott’s news conference. The company also stated that it expected to have restored power to 90% of its customers by Monday.
CenterPoint declared that it would conduct a “thorough review of our response” and collaborate with local and state authorities. Additionally, CenterPoint stated on Sunday that it had been “investing for years” to increase the region’s resistance to storms of this nature.
The utility has defended its storm preparations and stated that it has hired an additional 12,000 workers from outside of Houston.
It has stated that prepositioning those workers inside the anticipated storm impact region prior to Beryl’s landfall would have been dangerous.
Last Monday, Brad Tutunjian, vice president of regulatory policy at CenterPoint Energy, stated that the significant damage to electrical lines and trees made it more difficult to promptly restore power.
According to a post made by CenterPoint’s president and CEO, Jason Wells, on the company’s website on Sunday, the storm destroyed over 2,100 utility poles and forced the removal of over 18,600 trees from power wires, affecting more than 75% of the utility’s distribution circuits.
