Hurricane Beryl's impact on Texas has caused a significant power outage in Houston, with more than 1.3 million CenterPoint Energy customers left without electricity as of Monday morning. According to the Houston Chronicle, the outages followed Hurricane Beryl's landfall near Matagorda, and CenterPoint Energy reported on social media that its crews would initiate damage assessments and restoration planning as soon as conditions were safe.
By 7:45 a.m., the number of affected customers in the Houston area had escalated, with CenterPoint Energy's Outage Tracker indicating widespread disruptions which included damage to transformers and downed power lines in multiple neighborhoods such as Pasadena, Spring Branch, and Acres Homes, and the outages have been rising since 6 a.m. when around 500,000 were without power and surged past the million mark by 7 a.m., as reported by the Houston Chronicle.
Officials from CenterPoint have prioritized the power restoration process, aiming to get power back on for crucial services first, including hospitals, police departments, and water facilities, "Once we assess, we’ll get out and restore power to priority buildings like hospitals, water facilities, police departments, fire departments and then we’ll go focus on the majority of customers we can get back on as quickly as possible," Paul Lock, CenterPoint Energy local government relations manager said in a statement acquired by the Houston Chronicle.
The energy company had 2,500 mutual assistance crews on standby to assist with restoration efforts, Lock said they would call in more crews if necessary after the assessment phase, during a Sunday press conference, Lock noted that residents should contact CenterPoint Energy immediately if they encounter a downed power line or smell natural gas in their residence, providing the emergency contact number 713-207-2222, as mentioned by the Houston Chronicle.
For real-time updates, both CenterPoint Energy and Entergy Texas have provided online outage trackers, where affected customers can view current outages and report issues at their homes, these outage figures were rapidly changing throughout the early morning hours with CenterPoint Energy reporting incremental increases at 3 a.m. (28,276 customers), 3:30 a.m. (55,259 customers), and by 4:40 a.m. (111,587 customers), Entergy Texas reported 585 customers affected at 3 a.m., a slight drop to 333 by 3:30 a.m., but saw an increase to 417 by 4:40 a.m., and both companies' reported outages continued to rise, with CenterPoint's figures reaching 966,465 by 6:45 a.m. and 1,132,691 by 7:15 a.m., whereas Entergy Texas recorded 13,757 at 6:45 a.m. and 25,353 at 7:15 a.m., according to data from FOX 26 Houston.
