Posted on 07/16/2024 6:32:54 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
More than a quarter million people in and around Houston remained without power as of Monday after Hurricane Beryl hit the city last week — a crisis that has sparked political pressure from both sides of the aisle and drawn new attention to Texas’s troubled grid.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is demanding answers from the state’s biggest power utility over what went wrong in the storm, which led to blackouts for nearly 3 million people across Southeast Texas for days. He has given CenterPoint until the end of the month to offer an explanation amid a broad lack of response from the utility.
“The communications component of CenterPoint is unacceptable,” Abbott told reporters on Sunday. “Corrections are coming, whether they like it or not.”
Democratic lawmakers have called for scrutiny of the utility as well. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), sent a letter to the Department of Justice on Friday asking for a federal investigation of CenterPoint, which she argued has left hundreds of thousands of Houstonians in the dark after several weather disasters this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I went five days without Florida Power & Light (FPL) electricity after Ian hit.
The contractors FPL brought in worked hard.
Some houses in my county went over two weeks without electricity.
About a third of my neighboring households have generators.
Solar lawn lights can be taken indoors at night to provide inside light.
a fairly recent FR comment:
“People need to have their own backup plan. A cheap 5K BTU window air conditioner only draws about 500 watts. A Harbor Freight cheap 2000 watt gas generator is about $500.”
If you have gallons of gas and a long power cord, you might be able to make a deal with a neighbor to run your window AC unit.
“no underground lines”
My county water utility runs underground lines.
Pipes of a type that can keep water from escaping can keep water from coming in.
My neighbors have a submersed well pump with wire running to it.
Definitely explains why trump didn’t pick Greg Abbott. You can’t control your stats, you can’t control the federal government.
We sent 100 linemen from my state last week
Are they burying the lines? They’ve been doing that in Utah and we seldom have outages now despite storms.
Ian was a cat 4/5. You went 5 days without power.
Houston was hit with a cat 1. The majority of Houston went without power for 5-6 days--for a cat 1.
There's a bit of a difference.
Brought to you by DEI Power & Light.
“Last year Centerpoint Energy requested permission and funding from the Build Back Better budget to shore up the grid to withstand wind and flood damage. The Biden administration said NO.”
This is the root cause for the very slow recovery.
And this was only a Cat 1 storm.
If you live in a red state, expect more of this from DC. They don’t give a rat’s ass about us. Prepare to be out of power for a while.
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