Officials provide update on response, recovery efforts following Beryl’s landfall; 1.5M still without power in Texas

AUSTIN (KXAN/Nexstar) — More than 1.5 million Texans are still without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, as Texans in the Houston area face a second day of triple-digit weather.

During a briefing Wednesday, Acting Governor Dan Patrick , Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) Chief Nim Kidd and other officials provided an update on the state’s Hurricane Beryl response and recovery efforts in Matagorda, Texas, one of the counties that was hardest hit by the storm.

Beryl made landfall in Texas early Monday morning as a Category 1 hurricane.

More than 1.5 million Texas customers were without power as of Wednesday evening.

The American Electric Power Company plans to have all of their Matagorda County clients back online by tomorrow afternoon, according to Matagorda County Judge Bobby Seiferman who spoke alongside Patrick on Wednesday. Seiferman also mentioned several other power companies that plan to be up and running by the end of the week.

However, there are a remaining 2,500 households in Sargent, Texas — a town in Matagorda County — which may not regain power for up to two weeks.

“Some of those homes and properties, if not completely destroyed are going to be badly damaged,” Seiferman said. “And they have a lot of poles that they need to replace in that area. So the closer to the coast, of course, the heavier the damage and the more flooding there was.”

Meanwhile, CenterPoint Energy is still working to restore power to homes in the greater Houston area. There are still nearly one million outages in Harris County as of Wednesday at 5:14 p.m., according to the CenterPoint website .

Brad Tutunjian — CenterPoint Energy’s vice president of regulatory affairs — testified in a Houston City Council Meeting on Wednesday on both the power outages and the crashing of their digital power outage map .

“What we experienced was basically capacity restraints from all the people gaining access,” Tutunjian said. “What we had not anticipated was the number of robots and third-party companies, basically just sending constant pings to our facility. And it caused our outage tracker to crash.”

Tutunjian said that the crash was ‘unsalvageable’ but they hope to have a new cloud-based platform up and running before the brunt of hurricane season in August and September.

During the Matagorda press conference, Patrick said the state is working to get supplies and manpower to areas in need. Patrick said the goal was to help clear debris, feed families, and provide water and ice, as well as help set up cooling stations.

“Matagorda County was the hardest hit of the 121 counties in the disaster declaration that I put out last week,” Patrick said. “And Sargent was the hardest hit of that part of the county. So those people are facing some hard times and we’re gonna do everything we can to help them as quickly as we can.”

TDEM also said it is working with the debris management plans to bring in additional saw crews.

The division also said 25 additional ambulances were sent to the Houston area to assist with 911 calls following a shortage due to the emergency department waiting to offload patients.

The state said it was working to finalize fatality numbers from the storm, but Patrick said it was currently estimated at approximately 10 people.

Damage from the storm should be reported through the Individual State of Texas Assessment Tool (iSTAT) .

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also announced federal disaster assistance would be available to Texas for areas impacted by Beryl from July 5-9.

FEMA said funding was available for Anderson, Angelina, Aransas, Austin, Bowie, Brazoria, Brazos, Burleson, Calhoun, Cameron, Camp, Cass, Chambers, Cherokee, Colorado, Dewitt, Fayette, Fort Bend, Freestone, Galveston, Goliad, Gregg, Grimes, Hardin, Harris, Harrison, Hidalgo, Houston, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Kenedy, Kleberg, Lavaca, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Marion, Matagorda, Milam, Montgomery, Morris, Nacogdoches, Newton, Nueces, Orange,  Panola, Polk, Refugio, Robertson, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, San Patricio, Shelby, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur, Victoria, Walker, Waller, Washington, Webb, Wharton and Willacy counties.

The assistance would include debris removal and emergency work, including direct federal assistance, and federal funding would also be available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures statewide, according to FEMA.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KETK.com | FOX51.com.