Janet Avalos/Houston Public Media
It’s starting to feel like summer in Houston, where hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses and schools remain without power — and air conditioning — in the wake of last Thursday’s deadly spring storm.
At least eight Houston-area residents died as a result of Superstorm Derrico – a long-lasting wind storm that swept across the region from west to east and produced two tornadoes while causing widespread power outages and extensive damage to trees, buildings and infrastructure.
More than 130,000 customers were still without power as of midday Tuesday, according to CenterPoint Energy, which supplies power to the Houston area. Of the nearly 922,000 customers who lost power in the wake of Thursday’s storm, the company said Tuesday that power had been restored to about 85% of those customers and power restoration was expected to be “substantially complete” by Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, high temperatures are expected to reach about 90 degrees or higher every day this week in Houston, where the heat index on Tuesday is expected to reach 102, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures are expected to continue to rise throughout the weekend, with a high of 94 degrees expected on Memorial Day Monday.
“If they can get almost everyone back online by midweek, that would be great,” Space City Weather editor Eric Berger said Tuesday on Houston Matters with Craig Cohen. “Power should definitely be restored by the end of this week. There will be no relief during the day, and even the nights will be really warm.”
RELATED: Food, water and cooling centers are among the resources available to Houston area residents affected by the deadly storm
An interactive map on CenterPoint’s website showed Tuesday that the northwest part of Houston is being most affected by rolling power outages, with widespread outages also along the U.S. 290 corridor running northwest, north and east of downtown. There is also a large area west of Houston, between Katy and Waller, without power.
Texas Department of Transportation
Centrepoint said its workers are “encountering areas with significant system damage and large fallen trees accompanied by difficult restoration operations” in areas such as Bellaire, Cottage Grove, The Heights, Laysbrook/Timbergrove and Spring Branch.
“Although we have made good progress, we will not be satisfied until service is safely restored to every customer impacted by the storm,” Lena Wilson, senior vice president at Centrepoint, said in a statement.
Regarding the online interactive map CenterPoint created in the wake of the storm, the company said Tuesday that “there may be some errors at the individual address level where a customer appears as restored even though their power is out.” Centrepoint added that it is aware of these outages even if they are not reflected on the map.
The map is color-coded to show areas where power is expected to be restored Tuesday (green) and areas expected to have power by Wednesday (purple).
Centrepoint Energy
“Given the amount of outages associated with this extreme weather event, we wanted to provide our customers with as much information about service outages and restoration time as possible,” Wilson said. “We apologize for any confusion our outage information may cause to customers who are still out of service and not reflected on our map.”
RELATED: Houston area residents share accounts of fast-developing severe storms
There may also be cases where some Houston area residents have electricity but their neighbors do not, due to what CenterPoint describes as a “nesting outage” where the primary issue has been fixed but there may be smaller, secondary issues related to unseen damage or overloaded systems. Homes on the same street may also be on different electrical circuits, which could lead to different restoration times, according to the company.
CenterPoint also encouraged affected customers to check for damage to local equipment such as weather heads, the points where power enters homes. Weather headers are often pipes located on the sides of homes or buildings, according to the company.
“If a weather header is damaged, we cannot safely restore service to a home until a licensed electrician makes the necessary repairs,” Centrepoint said. “Customers served by underground service will not have a weather head, but their equipment may still have damage that may require maintenance.”
CenterPoint has provided the following safety tips for Houston area residents who remain without power or who are participating in cleanup efforts.
- Stay at least 35 feet away from downed power lines and damaged utility equipment. Be aware of dropped lines that could be hidden, and treat all dropped lines as if they were active.
- Be mindful of crews and give them plenty of room to assess damage and make repairs.
- Use the portable generator only in a well-ventilated area. Never operate it indoors or in a garage 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 can flow back into the power lines and potentially endanger workers or members of the public.
(Tags for translation)Energy and Environment
