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Hundreds of thousands of CenterPoint customers will remain without power into next week
CenterPoint Energy estimates that hundreds of thousands of customers will remain without power into next week. As of Friday evening, 812,000 households and businesses it serves lacked electricity.
Across the state, 922,000 businesses and households across several counties still lacked electricity as of Friday evening.
The longer-lasting outages were likely to be in the hard-hit areas of Matagorda County, Brazoria County and parts of Galveston County, along with some pockets elsewhere, said Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs for CenterPoint, at a Public Utility Commission of Texas meeting on Thursday.
The slower work will involve rebuilding large spans of infrastructure, Ryan told the commissioners, such as poles broken and toppled onto the ground.
“We know that we still have a lot of work to do and we will not stop the work until it is done,” Ryan said.
The Houston-area utility says it is planning to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers each day through this weekend.
Nearly 3 million electricity customers lost power in Texas after Hurricane Beryl swept across the southeastern portion of the state Monday.
[CenterPoint exudes chaos, but also appears to be restoring power faster than it previously has]
Frustrations at CenterPoint, the Houston-area electric utility, have boiled over after it bungled its communications to the public amid yet another massive Texas power outage. The company appeared in chaos as it worked to turn on power for angry people who faced days in dangerous heat without air conditioning, including stressed customers struggling to manage health issues without electricity. More than 48 hours after the storm left the region, the company still had no clear timeline for when people could expect their electricity to be restored.
Yet even as elected officials piled onto everyday Texans’ scathing criticisms of how long the outages are lasting, CenterPoint appears to be restoring power to people faster than it has after recent storms.
“We have never restored more than a million customers a little over two days after a hurricane before and you can only do that with significant readiness,” Ryan said at the PUC meeting Thursday.
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According to PowerOutage.us, Entergy Texas, which serves College Station and Beaumont, sill has 60,000 customers without power; Texas-New Mexico Power, serving some areas of Houston and around Brazoria on the Gulf Coast, has over 31,000 customers lacking power; and AEP Texas, which stretches from Brownsville to Bay City, has 2,500 customers without power.
Utility representatives made the case to state regulators on Thursday that they were prepared for the storm. PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson told Ryan that the utility needed to get out in the community to listen to feedback when the repairs were done.
“The public expects more communication, more frequent communication, different modes of communication,” Gleeson said. “And so I think it’s definitely incumbent on all of us to look at the way we communicate going forward.”
— Emily Foxhall, Alejandra Martinez and Dante Motley
Texans affected by Beryl can start applying for federal aid this weekend
Residents and business owners in 15 Texas counties that were hard hit by Hurricane Beryl will soon be able to apply for federal dollars to help them cover the costs to repair or replace their homes, federal officials told The Texas Tribune on Friday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency funding will be available to uninsured and underinsured people who live in Brazoria, Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Orange, Polk, San Jacinto, Walker, and Wharton counties, said FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg.
Individuals will be able to apply for funding by registering online at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or by calling 1-800-621-3362 or by using the FEMA App. The quickest way to receive the dollars is often by applying online because of high call volume, Rothenberg said. Registration is expected to open by Saturday morning.
Affected individuals can also visit a FEMA disaster recovery center to get direct help from a FEMA staff member. Some recovery centers were opened in the Houston region after a May derecho storm slammed into the region in May.
The amount of federal funding individuals can receive through FEMA’s program varies. Qualifying individuals can receive “serious needs assistance,” which is a $750 payment for emergency supplies such as food, medicine and baby formula. Separate claims can be submitted to receive support to repair homes.
“There’s a whole series of questions we ask people to get them the maximum amount of support,” Rothenberg said.
The maximum amount FEMA can provide to an individual for repairs is $42,500, according to statutory guidelines passed by Congress. People cannot receive disaster and insurance assistance for the same damages. Insured Texans should first file claims through their existing policies before applying for FEMA assistance.
FEMA reformed its federal assistance policies this year, allowing people who are underinsured to receive federal assistance if their insurance policy does not cover the full extent of their damages.
The state could request funding for additional counties affected by Beryl, which hit Texas early Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane and knocked out power for more than 2.5 million people. Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Thursday press release that additional counties may be requested once damage assessments are complete.
The announcement comes after President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration on Tuesday for damage sustained from Beryl in 67 counties. That declaration was the first step in unlocking federal dollars and resources to support storm recovery efforts.
FEMA offers two main types of assistance: public assistance and individual assistance. Public assistance supports local governments in rebuilding or repairing infrastructure, such as roads, bridges or schools while individual assistance helps affected people jumpstart their own recovery.
— Pooja Salhotra
