More Than 800,000 Customers in Houston Remain Without Power After Beryl

A map shows the number of Houston customers without power on Friday, July 12, 2024. Texas Parks and Wildlife map via CenterPoint

More than 800,000 customers were still without power in the Houston, Texas, area on Friday morning—five days after Beryl hit southern Texas—according to a power company.

As of Friday at 9:45 a.m. local time, CenterPoint Power’s tracker showed that 877,000 customers were without power, but noted that more than 1.3 million customers’ power had been restored since Beryl struck the region.

Power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers across Texas after the storm made landfall Monday, according to a map provided by PowerOutage.us. The site shows that more than 1 million people are still without power in the state.

The company said that it expects to restore power to all its customers by Sunday, July 14, according to a statement issued on Thursday evening.  The firm said in a previous statement that it will “have an additional 400,000 customers restored by the end of the day on Friday,” based on the “current progress” of restoration efforts.

“We’re building significant momentum in our restoration efforts, which is a testament to our crews’ hard work and dedication to restoring power as safely and quickly as possible,“ said Lynnae Wilson, a senior vice president at the firm, in a statement. “Our first priority is getting the lights back on. At the same time, we have seen firsthand the devastation our neighbors are facing and our commitment to the community goes beyond restoration efforts.”

Hurricane Beryl, which was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm, hit southern Texas and the Houston region on Monday morning, knocking out power to more than 2.2 million customers. That left millions across the Houston area without air conditioning amid relatively high temperatures and humidity throughout the week.

Officials in Houston have pressed CenterPoint over whether the company could have provided more resources before the storm hit Texas.

Mayor John Whitmire called on the utility to do a better job. “That’s the consensus of Houstonians. That’s mine,” he said.

Brad Tutunjian, the CenterPoint vice president for regulatory policy, defended the company’s response while facing pointed questions from the City Council and said more than 1 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday.

“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.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is currently traveling in Asia on an economic development trip, asked why Houston has not been able to deal with post-hurricane power outages. While he’s abroad, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has been the acting governor.

The governor, who has been in office since 2014, told news outlets that he will ask the Texas Public Utility Commission to investigate the city’s efforts as well as the power company’s response.

The Epoch Times contacted CenterPoint for comment Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.