Millions without power as Beryl batters Texas

Hurricane Beryl, now downgraded to a tropical depression, made landfall in Texas early Monday as a powerful Category 1 hurricane (119 to 153km/h), carrying with it significant sustained winds, storm surges and torrential rain. Approximately 2.4 million people are still without power.

According to PowerOutage, up to 2.4 million electricity customers are still without power across the US state, with Houston-based CenterPoint Energy reporting the lion’s share of outages.

The utility states that despite their preparations, the storm more heavily impacted their customers’, systems and infrastructure than anticipated, resulting in outages for more than 2.26 million customers at its peak.

According to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) and Central Pacific Hurricane Center, the tropical depression has been moving across the north east and is expected to continue into the week.

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The NHC lists downed power lines and flooded areas as deadly hazards resulting from the storm’s impact. and adds that conditions from Beryl could still spawn tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

According to Reuters reportage, Beryl caused severe damage across the Caribbean islands last week, churning towards Mexico. It then hit the coastal town of Matagorda, before moving across Houston.

Said Lynnae Wilson, senior vice president, Electric Business at CenterPoint, in a release: “We are mobilizing all of our available resources, as well as mutual assistance resources from other utility companies, to begin the process of quickly and safely restoring power to our customers.

“We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat. We are laser focused on the important and time-sensitive work that lies ahead.”

According to the utility, in the aftermath of the storm, focus will be on assessing the type of damage to the electric system and rerouting power to unaffected power lines.

Concurrent with the damage assessment, crews have begun a cut-and-clear process, which allows them to identify and isolate areas of damage to more quickly restore customers along sections that are not impacted.

To supplement the company’s internal resources, CenterPoint is bringing in an additional 10,000 resources from other utilities to assist with the restoration efforts.

The company is also assessing the deployment of its mobile generation units to provide temporary power restoration to certain critical facilities, such as cooling centres, healthcare facilities, first responder locations, senior centres and educational centres.

According to Power Grid International, citing reportage from Associated Press, Entergy reported roughly 250,000 customers without power, Texas New Mexico Power reported 111,000, and Sam Houston Electric Cooperative reported 76,000.

The remaining outages are scattered throughout providers in the Southeast portion of Texas.