FRIENDSWOOD, Texas (KTRK) — More than 1 million people across southeast Texas were still without power Thursday evening due to damage caused by Hurricane Beryl. CenterPoint Energy has been responding to the bulk of the widespread outages, but other power companies, such as Entergy and Texas-New Mexico Power (TNMP), are facing delays as well.
Steve and Nancy Evans are on day four without power, and the only thing that has been getting them through the outage is their generator. They said they’ve called TNMP, who services their Friendswood home, multiple times, but they haven’t been able to get an answer for their neighborhood.
“They’ll give us an estimated restoration time. But then the next day, they’ll tell us something different. We’ll call again to see what the update is, and they just keep pushing it back,” Nancy Evans said.
READ MORE: New CenterPoint Energy map shows repair work hasn’t even started in many areas still without power
According to Texas-New Mexico Power, there are still 30,000 customers without power. Crews were brought in from other states like Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, and Arkansas, and most of them worked 16-hour shifts.
Sara Yingling, TNMP’s communications director, said that 75% of their customers have had their power restored, and a significant number of remaining customers will have it restored by the end of Sunday.
However, the hardest-hit areas may have to wait until early next week for power restoration.
“Those are areas with a dense population of trees, like Dickinson, Angleton, and Holiday Lakes. I was just out in Holiday Lakes, and the roads are covered in trees and debris,” Yingling said. “We just ask for people to be patient during this time. We also want to warn the public to please stay away from our line crews and field personnel. They have a very dangerous job, and any kind of distractions could lead to a fatality.”
The numbers look worse on their online outage map, which Yingling said is having issues updating in real time. As a result, their call center in Albuquerque has received three months’ worth of calls in just three days.
“Our contract crews from out-of-state don’t have access to put that information in from their computer systems. So they’re having to do it manually. So there’s a little bit of a lag in getting the accurate numbers onto our outage map,” Yingling said. “In addition, our phone lines are down at our distribution operations center in Alvin. So that’s affected the restoration times on our website.”
ALSO: 400K CenterPoint customers could be without power a week after Beryl, company projects
For those in northern counties such as Montgomery, Liberty, and Walker, an Entergy spokesperson said their crews consisting of more than 2,400 employees have restored power to 60% of the 252,460 customers who were impacted by Beryl.
As of 1 p.m. on Thursday, about 149,000 customers had their power turned back on. However, residents of the most severely impacted communities in Cleveland, Conroe, and New Caney may have to wait until Monday to get power.
According to Entergy, they are still making damage assessments. However, recent reports showed 407 downed poles, 202 damaged transformers, 614 broken cross arms, and approximately 657,000 feet of wire needing replacement.
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