Beryl ‘impacted Houston more than expected’

Hurricane Beryl has “more heavily impacted” Houston’s electrical infrastructure than initially anticipated, the region’s main electricity provider said in a news release Monday.

The Category 1 hurricane caused widespread power outages affecting more than 2.26 million customers in the Houston metro area, according to the utility’s website.

CenterPoint did not provide a timeline for restoring service in the news release, saying its crews are still assessing the damage to its electrical systems during the storm. Beryl hit Houston early Monday, causing widespread flooding, infrastructure damage and at least four deaths.

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While customers on unaffected grids could see power restored quickly, others in harder-hit areas “may experience extended outages and should prepare accordingly,” the company said. CenterPoint did not identify areas that should expect to remain without power.

CenterPoint said it will release general restoration estimates once the damage assessment is complete, with “more specific service restoration timelines” to come later.

“We are mobilizing all of our available resources, along with mutual aid resources from other utility companies, to begin the process of quickly and safely restoring power to our customers,” Lynnae Wilson, CenterPoint’s senior vice president, said in the news release. “We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any period of time, especially during hot weather. We are focused on the important and urgent work ahead.”

Seven thousand partner teams were en route to Houston to assist CenterPoint’s 3,000 local employees as of Monday afternoon, Paul Lock, the company’s director of local government relations, said at an afternoon news conference.

Lock said the company expects a clearer picture of the restoration timeline to emerge Tuesday.

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CenterPoint Outage Tracking Still Not Available

As CenterPoint works to restore service across the region, the millions of Houstonians without power continue to lack a critical resource for tracking power outages and restoration times: CenterPoint’s Outage Tracker.

The Outage Tracker, a map of the Houston metropolitan area highlighting areas affected by outages, has been offline since May due to “technical difficulties” caused by the derecho that swept through Harris County that month, CenterPoint officials said.

On Sunday, a CenterPoint representative said the company would replace Outage Tracker with a “redesigned cloud platform” by the end of July. In the meantime, the company pointed to its Storm Center, which updates general outage information every 15 minutes, and its Power Alert service, which provides community-specific restoration information via text, email or phone.

But the lack of clarity around the extent of the power outages and restoration times has caused consternation among CenterPoint customers eager for updates after the derecho.

CenterPoint manages the systems that power nearly everyone in Harris and Fort Bend counties, as well as other parts of Greater Houston. In total, about 2.8 million Houstonians rely on CenterPoint, according to the company.

CenterPoint has a long history of dealing with major weather events that cause widespread power outages. Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm that hit Greater Houston in 2008, caused power outages for nearly 2.2 million CenterPoint customers. Some were still without power nearly two weeks later.

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