Two Million folks still without power around Houston in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. Restoration will be a multi-day effort.
Posted by
Qale
Jul 8 '24, 18:29
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HOUSTON — Strong storms knocked out power to more than 3 million customers in the Greater Houston area.
At least 10 transmission lines are down, according to Acting Gov. Dan Patrick.
The power companies and city leaders say this will be a multi-day outage for most customers because the damage is extensive and widespread. Crews are assessing the damage and will start repairs as soon as possible.
At 6 p.m., more than 2 million CenterPoint customers were still without power. There were 2.8 million at the storm's peak.
CenterPoint said the initial focus in the storm's aftermath will be assessing the type of damage to the electric system and rerouting power on unaffected power lines. Concurrent with the damage assessment, crews have already begun a cut-and-clear process, which allows crews to identify and isolate areas of damage to more quickly restore customers along sections that are not impacted.
CenterPoint has approximately 11,500 power workers mobilized to begin assessment and repairs. To supplement the company’s 1,500 internal resources, CenterPoint is bringing in an additional 10,000 resources from other utilities to assist with the restoration efforts. CenterPoint is also expected to increase its staging sites across the area to 12.
“We are mobilizing all of our available resources, as well as mutual assistance resources from other utility companies, to begin the process of quickly and safely restoring power to our customers,” Lynnae Wilson with CenterPoint said in a 4 p.m. update. “We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat. We are laser-focused on the important and time-sensitive work that lies ahead.”
When the damage assessment is completed, CenterPoint will begin publishing estimates for substantial restoration of the system. Customers in the hardest-hit areas may experience prolonged outages and should prepare accordingly.
Finally, the company is assessing the deployment of its mobile generation units to provide temporary power restoration to certain critical facilities, such as cooling centers, healthcare facilities, first responder locations, senior centers and educational centers.
CenterPoint will continue to provide general outage information such as total outage counts – updated approximately every 5 to 15 minutes – at CenterPointEnergy.com/StormCenter. CenterPoint’s electric customers are encouraged to enroll in Power Alert Service® to receive outage details and community-specific restoration updates as they become available.
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