Today's 4:00 p.m. update from Centerpoint Energy revealed that power restoration is moving along slowly but surely. And we do mean slowly.
A full 40% of Centerpoint customers have had their power restored since Saturday night, but that means another 60% -- or 1.34 million customers -- are still without power. This is an increase of only 9%. Entergy has revealed that 85% of their customers are without power, which is another small increase from the 94% without power yesterday afternoon.
Centerpoint customers can still check the company's website to view an area map of power outages and a list of outage percentages by ZIP code, although many people have expressed doubts over the accuracy of Centerpoint's information. Following suit, Entergy has also posted a map of power outages that extends from Conroe and The Woodlands to central Louisiana. Most people have found that the Houston Chronicle's power outage map is much more reliable than either map above, however, as it is populated by actual customers using real-time data.
Now for the bad news. Centerpoint is predicting that only 50% to 75% of its customers will have power by next Tuesday. Worst-case scenario: 1.1 million people could still be without power this time next week. Even worse news comes courtesy of Entergy, which predicts the following power restoration times for its service areas:
- The Woodlands: September 25th
- Conroe: September 29th
- New Caney: October 5th
- Beaumont: October 6th
While the news above may be discouraging for many people, especially in light of news that hotter temperatures will return next week, Houstonist wants everyone to keep in mind the thousands of crews that were sent in from various cities and states across the nation to assist us in our time of need. Heck, even Canada sent us some power crews!
These men (and women...) are every bit as tired and exhausted as the rest of us, many are working on only a few hours of sleep -- if that -- and all are working selflessly to restore power to a city that isn't their own. If you see these crews on your street, make sure to go out there and thank them for the job they're doing; they deserve our appreciation for their efforts.
So keep your chin up, Houston. We'll be back in the game soon enough.
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Photo courtesy of Flickr user seejanebe.
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I'll start by saying that yes, I am lucky to be alive, healthy, and to have my property relatively undamaged. But you can skip giving me the CenterPoint sob story.
Sure, I'll be courteous to the employees that eventually work on my power, whenever that is. Until then, they're doing their job (slowly), and I owe them nothing. I don't feel the least bit sorry if they're tired; they're likely being quite well compensated.
Besides, if they're a little sleepy, they have nobody to blame but CenterPoint, who should have had out-of-state workers here sooner and in much higher numbers than they did.
Taking weeks to do this is just unacceptable. I hope Mayor White declines to renew their contract over this fiasco.
An "Act of God" knocked out power to 93% of the Centerpoint service area. Personally, I hope that Mayor White won't renew God's contract.
In all seriousness, this is a huge undertaking in a huge service area. And, full disclosure, I have power, so I don't have the frustration that I might have otherwise. But, the city of Houston encompasses 600 square miles. The Centerpoint service area is much larger than that. 93% of the service area was knocked offline by downed trees and poles and blown transformers and whatnot.
Maybe it's a fair question to ask why so much of our service area is served by wires atop tinkertoys, but that's what we've got, and that's going to take some time to repair.
Tinkertoys! I wondered why the light poles in my neighborhood were so colorful.
Of course, my house is made of Lincoln Logs, so this isn't entirely unexpected ...
It's not just Centerpoint, we have crews from as far away as Canada working 16 hour shifts to get us online. Some are from states that have now lost power, but, they remain here to bring us up. I'm grateful for them all. My yard is a game of Pick Up Sticks (I am wondering what contract? Centerpoint is repairing it's infrastructure, don't like 'em - go solar).
The city of Houston has given them permission to maintain the city's power grid. So the city of Houston has some recourse if they're not doing their job.
They're also a for-profit company, so they're not working as hard as they can, they're working as hard as is profitable. Of course they could work harder, but it would mean more equipment and paying more overtime to employees. So the question then becomes, are they working as hard as they are obligated to by their contract with the City? In order to ensure that this is the case, and thus that we are getting power back as quickly as they can be required to do so, somebody needs to be pushing them.
Finally, their updates and schedules are so uninformative as to be useless. It's obvious that they have more detailed plans than what they've shown the public. This lack of transparency betrays either incompetence or that they're hiding something. Neither of those is a good thing.
As massive as job as they have to do, I think asking for constant updates and promises as to when such-and-such will happen is unrealistic. Sure, everyone would like to have electricity restored immediately, but that's obviously not going to happen.
I think thousands of people working in overlapping 16-hour shifts is about as much as we can ask for, given that many local power workers have their own problems to deal with.