I’ve been struggling to find figures for homes without power. About 7 minutes before you asked, in post#2285, I excerpted a Center Point Energy press release. There is more info in the linked article there.
Right now, they have 81% of their 2.26 Million customers without electricity - 1.84 Million are still dark. I understand from discussions yesterday that they supply electricity to about 1/3 of the customers in that area (though I’ve not been able to find a good source for that yet) which would support the figure of 5 million without electric in the area that I posted earlier this morning.
All the companies have assessment crews right now flying around - they couldn’t do so yesterday due to high winds and the SAR efforts. Hopefully, they will be able to get a good idea by nightfall. Probably, tomorrow’s releases will be a lot better.
Yesterday, I saw that they were guessing that 30% of their infrastructure was wiped out. We’re not talking here about simply downed lines to houses, but major transmission lines and switching facilities. If that is any where near close to true, it will take a LONG time to get power back on for an extraordinary number of people and businesses -— and I won’t be surprised to hear figures in excess of 4 weeks, though I’m expecting them to say 2-4 weeks.
Electric service damage is something I’ve been looking for, and I’ll keep posting what I can find.
It took a little over three weeks to get everybody's power restored after Alicia, so, frustrating as it is, that sounds about right.