DALLAS — With around 350,000 homes and businesses still without power in the Houston area almost a week after Hurricane Beryl hit Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said he’s demanding an investigation into the response of the utility that serves the area as well as answers about its preparations for upcoming storms.
“Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious,” Abbott said at his first news conference about Beryl since returning to the state from an economic development trip to Asia.
While CenterPoint Energy has restored power to about 1.9 million customers since the storm hit on July 8, the slow pace of recovery has put the utility, which provides electricity to the nation’s fourth-largest city, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared for the storm that left people without air conditioning in the searing summer heat.
Abbott said he was sending a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas requiring it to investigate why restoration has taken so long and what must be done to fix it. In the Houston area, Beryl toppled transmission lines, uprooted trees and snapped branches that crashed into power lines.
With months of hurricane season left, Abbott said he’s giving CenterPoint until the end of the month to specify what it’ll be doing to reduce or eliminate power outages in the event of another storm. He said that will include the company providing detailed plans to remove vegetation that still threatens power lines.
Abbott also said that CenterPoint didn’t have “an adequate number of workers pre-staged” before the storm hit.
CenterPoint, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment following the governor’s news conference, said in a Sunday news release that it expected power to be restored to 90% of its customers by the end of the day on Monday.
The utility has defended its preparation for the storm and said that it has brought in about 12,000 additional workers from outside Houston. It has said it would have been unsafe to preposition those workers inside the predicted storm impact area before Beryl made landfall.
Brad Tutunjian, vice president for regulatory policy for CenterPoint Energy, said last week that the extensive damage to trees and power poles hampered the ability to restore power quickly.
A post Sunday on CenterPoint’s website from its president and CEO, Jason Wells, said that over 2,100 utility poles were damaged during the storm and over 18,600 trees had to be removed from power lines, which impacted over 75% of the utility’s distribution circuits.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is seeking answers for the power outages that have plagued the state following the passage of Tropical Storm Beryl. The storm, which made landfall on the Texas coast last week, brought heavy rain and strong winds, causing widespread damage to infrastructure and leaving thousands of residents without electricity.
In a press conference on Monday, Governor Abbott expressed his frustration with the power outages, stating that the situation was unacceptable and that he would be working with state and local officials to determine the root cause of the problem. He also called on utility companies to prioritize restoring power to affected areas as quickly as possible.
The power outages have been particularly severe in the Houston area, where thousands of residents have been without electricity for several days. Many businesses have been forced to close, and residents have been left struggling to stay cool in the sweltering heat.
Governor Abbott has promised to hold utility companies accountable for their response to the outages, and has called for a full investigation into the causes of the widespread power failures. He has also urged residents to conserve energy and take precautions to stay safe during the outage.
As Texas continues to recover from the impact of Tropical Storm Beryl, Governor Abbott is working to ensure that residents have access to the resources they need to rebuild and recover. He has pledged to do everything in his power to address the power outages and prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.
