Frustration with power company mounts as Texans face weeklong outage after Hurricane Beryl

More than a week after Hurricane Beryl made landfall, utility crews across Houston are still working to restore power to the last 50,000 customers who have been without electricity through a stretch of hot weather. Some residents and politicians say they’ve had enough and their frustration is directed at CenterPoint Energy. William Brangham discussed more with Dug Begley of the Houston Chronicle.

Read the Full Transcript

Stephanie Sy: It’s been more than a week since Hurricane Beryl made landfall, and utility repair crews across Houston are still working to restore power to the last 50,000 customers, who have been without electricity through a brutal stretch of hot weather. Some residents and local politicians say they have had enough.

William Brangham is here with more.

William Brangham: That’s right, Stephanie.

A lot of that anger and frustration is being directed at the local utility in Houston, CenterPoint Energy, after thousands of residents have endured a heat wave with no power and no air conditioning. At least half-a-dozen deaths have been attributed to the heat and lack of power, and emergency rooms have seen a surge of heat-related cases.

Amid rising anger against CenterPoint, there have been reports of residents threatening some of the utility’s line crews. Texas’ governor, Republican Greg Abbott, gave the utility until the end of the month to develop a plan to minimize future outages.

For the latest on this, we are joined by Dug Begley of The Houston Chronicle.

Dug, thank you so much for being here.

As I mentioned, about 50,000 people still don’t have power. That’s down from a quarter-of-a-million a few days ago and nearly three million when the storm first came. But Hurricane Beryl was only a Category 1. Yes, it’s still a hurricane, but just a Category 1, when it hit Texas.

Why is it that that storm did so much damage?

Dug Begley, The Houston Chronicle: Well, I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people here are wondering, is that a Category 1 that surged inland and gained strength as it hit the coast had extraordinary winds that came a little further than the normal Category 1.

And I think, if you ask CenterPoint Energy, they are seeing damage north of Houston that would be more categorized with a strong — slightly stronger storm. But the other consideration, because CenterPoint Energy’s distribution system is what took the brunt of the damage, not the transmission lines that bring power into the Houston area, is that, simply, vegetation fell into the lines.

Trees toppled poles, trees brought lines down, and a series of just sort of neighborhood-by-neighborhood, street-by-street issues led to a lot of the outages. However, a lot of people just have questions about that and how the system could be that vulnerable to what is, like you said, a Category 1.

William Brangham: As I mentioned, a lot of criticism and frustration and anger from residents, from the governor.

Is it your sense that this has just reached a breaking point, that it’s been — the power has been out for so long and people are just livid?

Dug Begley: I think so.

I mean, I think that there’s an element of it that it’s hot in Houston. And when we don’t have air conditioning, people get increasingly testy and frustrated. And they look to why their power isn’t on, who is going to turn it back on and when.

But remember that also we had a derecho events and straight-line wins here in may that knocked almost a million people off, slightly less than that. But that came unexpectedly, did a lot of damage to different power lines. And that followed by a Category 1 that knocks 2.26 million off, followed by what seemed like a slow restoration, has a lot of people asking questions.

William Brangham: And what are the answers to those questions? If — I know the governor said, you have got to give us a report at the end of the month to demonstrate how you’re not going to do this going forward.

But what is the principal problem here?

Dug Begley: I think the problem is, CenterPoint is challenged to keep this system operational, but there are key things they have to do and that they say they are doing through resiliency plans or through their routine maintenance that people in a lot of the neighborhoods simply don’t see.

And that is primarily, at least in the last few days of talking to people, about vegetation and whether trees need to be trimmed better around the lines, whether they need to predict where the lines are going to be most susceptible to tree damage and harden that with either composite poles that are going to hold up better than wooden poles and other structural fixes.

But I think that the chief frustration and the chief thing that comes out through a lot of this is whether or not CenterPoint and the state — because, remember, the state does regulate this. So they already have an opportunity to oversee a lot of CenterPoint’s activities and processes when it comes to power distribution — whether those are being followed, and then whether those are being strengthened every time they ask us for a rate increase.

William Brangham: When you talk to people who study electrical grids, they — a lot of them will say that we built a grid for a climate that doesn’t exist. We know storms are going to keep coming on. We know heat waves are going to keep coming on.

There’s been a lot of criticism in Texas, in particular, that CenterPoint and the state have not done enough to build resiliency into that system. Are those criticisms fair?

Dug Begley: Whether or not they’re fair, I think, is the question that’s going to be hopefully raised as we go forward through the legislature and some of the Public Utility Commission of Texas oversight.

But the sense from residents is, absolutely, that there has not been enough done to protect this system from what is the most predictable series of natural disasters that the Houston and the Gulf Coast can have, which is strong winds and a lot of sudden rain, and that the constant loss of hundreds of thousands of residents is what one councilmember this morning called — city councilmember here in Houston called unacceptable and which everyone is looking to a new — a rethink of the system.

Whether that’s buried lines, whether that is hardening the infrastructure that’s out there now, or simply being able to bring people back online faster with better planning right before storms.

William Brangham: All right, Dug Begley of The Houston Chronicle, thank you so much for joining us.

Dug Begley: Thank you, sir.

Stephanie Sy: Thank you, William.