Houston’s largest utility faced mounting criticism on Wednesday for its response to Hurricane Beryl, as nearly 1.4 million homes and businesses remained without power, leaving residents searching for places to cool off, refuel, and find food.
City Council member Abbie Kamin highlighted the extended power outage since Monday’s storm as a “life safety concern.” During a council meeting, she told a CenterPoint Energy executive, “We say ‘everything we can do’ to get the lights back on. In my opinion, respectfully, they should be on.”
Mayor John Whitmire echoed this sentiment, stating, “CenterPoint needs to do a better job restoring power. That’s the consensus of Houstonians. That’s mine.”
Residents seeking refuge in community centers questioned how the nation’s fourth-largest city could falter under a storm less severe than many others that have struck in the past two decades. Beryl, a Category 1 hurricane, has been blamed for at least seven deaths in the U.S.—one in Louisiana and six in Texas—and at least 11 in the Caribbean.
“Maybe they thought it wasn’t going to be so bad, but it’s had a tremendous effect. They needed to be better prepared,” said Carlos Rodriguez, a construction worker, as he collected food at a distribution center. His family, including two young daughters, was struggling without power. “We have no power, we’re going to bed late, and I’m using a cardboard fan to give my kids some relief,” Rodriguez said.
Power outages peaked at 2.7 million customers after the storm made landfall in Texas on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us. Brad Tutunjian, CenterPoint’s vice president for regulatory policy, defended the company’s response, noting that more than 1 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday morning, though the company’s online tracker showed just under a million at that time. “To me, I think that’s a monumental number right there,” Tutunjian said.
The company admitted that most of the 12,000 workers brought in to assist with recovery were not in the Houston area when the storm hit. Initial forecasts had Beryl hitting farther south along the Gulf Coast, near the Texas-Mexico border, before heading toward Houston. CenterPoint decided not to pre-position third-party workers in the storm’s path for safety reasons, Tutunjian explained, instead asking them to stay close enough to respond after the storm passed.
One major challenge was restoring power disrupted by fallen trees and branches. “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,” Tutunjian said.
Council members questioned why CenterPoint, which has served the Houston area for about 100 years, hasn’t been more proactive in trimming trees during calm weather or putting more power lines underground. Tutunjian responded that the company has been installing new lines underground in residential areas for decades.
Two council members mentioned a house fire reportedly caused by a downed power line, with texts indicating that the fire department and the utility did not respond. This is not the first time Houston has faced widespread power outages. In 2008, Hurricane Ike left about 2.2 million CenterPoint customers without power, with 75% restored within 10 days. In 2021, a deadly winter storm caused millions to lose power across Texas. More recently, storms in May killed eight people and left nearly a million customers without power.
Longtime Houston resident Raquel Desimone expressed frustration at having to scramble for power and shelter again. “I went through Rita, Ike, Imelda, and Harvey,” Desimone said. “That the infrastructure can’t handle a basic storm, even a Category 1, is sort of crazy to me that I’m having to do this.” Sharon Carr, another lifelong Houston resident, shared similar frustrations. “Every little thing affects us that way. There’s too much wind, we don’t have power. It’s raining a long time, we don’t have power,” Carr said. “And it takes three, four, five days to get it back up. Sometimes that’s too long for people that are sickly, can’t stand the heat, or don’t have transportation to get to cooling centers.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, acting as governor while Gov. Greg Abbott is on an economic development trip to Asia, stated on Tuesday that he would evaluate CenterPoint’s response and preparedness after the recovery effort. “CenterPoint will have to answer for themselves, if they were prepared, if they were in position. Their company is responsible for that. The state was in position,” he said. “I’ll tell you whether I’m satisfied or not when I have a full report of where their crews were when they were asked to come in.”
