Houston drivers urged to avoid roads at night as thousands of traffic lights remain without power after Beryl – Houston Public Media

Mark Norris/Houston Public Media

Houston-area residents who are without power in their homes following Hurricane Beryl may be searching for food, water, groceries or fuel for their generators. They may also be looking to visit friends and relatives or simply escaping the summer heat and seeking fresh air, perhaps in their cars.

Driving in the city may be necessary but could also be considered more dangerous than usual, as three days after Monday’s storm, traffic lights throughout Houston remain out of service.

Mayor John Whitmire said Wednesday that about 1,400 traffic lights in the city were not working because of widespread power outages. More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power Thursday afternoon, when Whitmire and interim Police Chief Larry Satterwhite urged residents to use caution on the roads and try to avoid them altogether at night.

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Satterwhite said the Houston Police Department has seen a “huge increase in crashes” since Monday, adding, “We attribute that directly to the fact that it’s dark and people can’t see.”

“Without power, we face a lot of challenges. The first is that driving on the roads is extremely dangerous,” Satterwhite said. “There are so many intersections without power that you don’t realize it until you’re in the middle of it. You can imagine if you have cars coming from two different directions, it could be catastrophic.”

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On Thursday, Whitmire asked Houston residents to “limit their nighttime driving” until the power situation improves. More than 2.2 million homes and businesses were without power at the height of Monday’s storm, which made landfall near Matagorda Bay as a Category 1 hurricane and then moved directly over Houston.

CenterPoint Energy, which provides electricity to much of the region, had restored power to nearly 1.2 million of those customers by Thursday afternoon. But Jason Ryan, the company’s executive vice president, told the Public Utilities Commission of Texas earlier Thursday that about 500,000 people would still be without power next week.

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It remains to be seen how soon the city’s traffic lights will be restored. Satterwhite said he hopes to have most of them working again by the end of the weekend.

“I hope we have enough energy – enough lights in the city, street lights and all those things – to make things work at night like we’re used to so we can see everything better,” he said.