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This is going to take a very long time to recover from, it appears... Assessment will be much better by today's end - planes and choppers will be able to fly - winds are no factor as they were yesterday. The following report was filed about midnight, 12 hours ago:

from: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6000312.html

CenterPoint, Entergy Texas and the Texas-New Mexico Power Co. — the three firms charged with electricity transmission in Houston and the surrounding areas — all said Saturday evening that most customers were still without power — approaching 5 million people on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Texas-New Mexico Power said its main transmission line into Brazoria County is down and urged those who evacuated to stay away for now.

CenterPoint service crews rolled into neighborhoods to make repairs where they could starting at 11 a.m. Saturday. The company says the Federal Aviation Administration prevented it from deploying a squad of helicopters used to make aerial damage assessments until late in the day. In the first hours after the hurricane, the FAA allowed only medical transport to take flight.

Clamoring for daylight, CenterPoint says it got six helicopters into the air late in the afternoon to take videos and pictures. The biggest question is how severely the transmission system is damaged.

More than just poles and wires, the transmission system is the vast network of metal towers that run along grassy rights of way, bundling massive megawatts and delivering them to neighborhood substations.

Floyd LeBlanc, a spokesman for CenterPoint, said initial reports suggest that up to 30 percent of the company's transmission system was hard hit by the storm. The company will have a better idea about damage today after more aerial assessments.