1.6 Million Houses Remain Impacted by Power Outages After Beryl’s Impact on Texas

Destruction left by Beryl in Texas, July 2024 Photo:@AEPTexas

July 10, 2024 Hour: 6:06 pm

The situation that has generated criticism for the response of the state government and at a time when there is an extreme heat wave in certain areas

More than 1.6 million homes in Texas are still without power this Wednesday after the passage of Beryl, which on Monday arrived as a Category 1 hurricane to this southern US state.

As of this Wednesday morning, more than 1.6 million homes were still without electricity, a situation that has generated criticism for the response of the state government and at a time when there is an extreme heat wave in certain areas.

According to data from CenterPoint Energy, the leading energy provider in Houston and South Texas, more than 1.3 million of its customers are still in the dark.

The company has not given a specific schedule on when service will be fully restored for homes that have run out of electricity.

Crews are making headway and restoring electric service to customers left without power after Hurricane Beryl. If you see our crews working, please do not approach them. Their work is dangerous. Please allow them to focus on restoring power safely. #WeAreAEPTexas pic.twitter.com/uib8SKKkDe
— AEP Texas (@AEPTexas) July 9, 2024

CenterPoint’s vice president of operations and service delivery, Brad Tutunjian, said Wednesday that the company had never had “an incident of this magnitude,” according to information cited by ABC13.

“I can tell you that the amount of work that needs to be mounted and prepared is monumental,” he added. For his part, Patrick said that both state and local authorities have opened “cooling stations” to support those affected by the heat wave.

Beryl, today a post-tropical cyclone whose remnants lie in the northeast of the US, left some 2.7 million people without electricity on Monday in a wide region that includes Houston, the fourth most populous city in the country.

Beryl has claimed the lives of eight people, seven of them in the state of Texas (including one Hispanic), and one in Louisiana, and authorities fear that the death toll may rise due to lack of air conditioning when a wave of extreme heat and humidity is recorded.