HOUSTON — Pressure mounted Wednesday on Houston’s power utility as millions of residents still had no power nearly three days after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, amid questions over how a city that is all too familiar with destructive weather was unable to better withstand a Category 1 storm.
Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest type, but has has been blamed for at least seven U.S. deaths — one in Louisiana and six in Texas. Earlier, 11 died in the Caribbean. “We have no power, we’re going to bed late and I’m using a fan made out of a piece of cardboard to give my kids some relief,” Rodriguez said.
Brad Tutunjian, the CenterPoint vice president for regulatory policy, who faced pointed questions from the City Council, defended the company’s response. He said more than 1 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday morning, although the company’s online tracker put the figure at just under a million at the time.The company acknowledged that most of the 12,000 workers it brought in to help the recovery were not in the Houston area when the storm arrived.
“When we have storms such as this, with the tree completely coming down … taking out our lines and our poles, that’s where all the time comes in to do the restoration work,” he said. Houston was also hit hard in 2021 when Texas’ power grid failed during a deadly winter storm that brought plunging temperatures, snow and ice. Millions lost power and were left to ride out the storm in frigid homes or flee.Gov. Greg Abbott, who is in Asia on an economic development trip, questioned why Houston has repeatedly been plagued with power problems after severe weather.