It’s starting to feel like summer in Houston as hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses and schools remain without electricity – and air conditioning – in the aftermath of last Thursday’s deadly spring storm.
At least eight Houston-area residents have died as a result of the derecho – a long-lived wind storm that swept across the region from west to east and produced two tornadoes while causing widespread power outages and significant damage to trees, buildings and infrastructure.
More than 130,000 customers were still without electricity as of midday Tuesday, according to CenterPoint Energy, which supplies power to the Houston region. Of the approximately 922,000 customers who lost power in the immediate aftermath of Thursday’s storm, the company said Tuesday that electricity had been restored to about 85% of those customers and power restorations were expected to be “substantially complete” by Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, high temperatures of about 90 degrees or more are expected every day this week in Houston, where the heat index Tuesday is forecasted to be as high as 102, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures are expected to continue climbing throughout the weekend, with a high of 94 predicted for Memorial Day on Monday.
“If they can get pretty much everyone back online by the middle of the week, that would be great,” Eric Berger, the editor of Space City Weather, said Tuesday on Houston Matters with Craig Cohen. “Certainly the power needs to be restored by this weekend. There will be no relief during the daytime, and even the nights are going to be really warm.”
An interactive map on the CenterPoint website Tuesday showed that the northwest part of Houston is most significantly impacted by ongoing power outages, with extensive outages also along the U.S. 290 corridor extending northwest as well as north and east of downtown. A large area west of Houston, between Katy and Waller, also is without electricity.
Texas Department of Transportation
CenterPoint said its workers are “encountering areas of significant system damage and large downed trees accompanied by difficult restorations” in areas such as Bellaire, Cottage Grove, the Heights, Lazybrook/Timbergrove and Spring Branch.
“While we have made good progress, we will not be satisfied until every last storm-impacted customer has their service safely restored,” Lynnae Wilson, a senior vice president at CenterPoint, said in a statement.
Regarding the online interactive map CenterPoint created in the aftermath of the storm, the company said Tuesday “there may be some inaccuracies at the individual address level where the customer is shown as being restored even though they are without power.” CenterPoint added that it is aware of those outages even if they are not reflected on the map.
The map is color-coded to show which areas are estimated to have power restored on Tuesday (in green) and which are expected to have electricity by Wednesday (in purple).
CenterPoint Energy
“Given the magnitude of outages associated with this severe weather event, we wanted to provide our customers with as much information about their outage and restoration time as possible,” Wilson said. “We apologize for any confusion our outage information may have caused for those customers who continue to be out and are not reflected on our map.”
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There also could be instances in which some Houston-area residents have power but their neighbors do not, because of what CenterPoint described as a “nesting outage” in which the primary problem was fixed but there could be smaller, secondary issues related to unseen damage or overloaded systems. Homes on the same street might also be on different electrical circuits, which could result in varied restoration times, according to the company.
CenterPoint also encouraged impacted customers to check for damage in localized equipment such as weatherheads, which are the points where power enters homes. Weatherheads often are pipes located on the sides of homes or buildings, according to the company.
“If the weatherhead is damaged, we cannot safely restore service to the home until a licensed electrician has made the necessary repairs,” CenterPoint said. “Customers who are served by an underground service will not have a weatherhead, but there may still be damage to their equipment that could require servicing.”
CenterPoint offered the following safety tips for Houston-area residents who remain without electricity or are engaging in cleanup efforts.
- Stay at least 35 feet away from downed power lines and damaged utility equipment. Be mindful of downed lines that could be hidden, and treat all downed lines as if they are energized.
- Be cautious around work crews and give them plenty of room to assess damage and make repairs.
- Use a portable generator only in a well-ventilated area. Never run it indoors or in a garage in order to avoid carbon monoxide fumes, which can be deadly.
- Never connect a portable generator directly to your building’s electrical system during a power outage as electricity could flow back into the power lines and potentially endanger workers or members of the public.
