Around 500,000 customers will remain without electricity until next week, at a time when power outages persist Massive power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl and frustration is growing over the pace of power restoration efforts, an official at Houston’s largest electric utility said Thursday.
Jason Ryan, executive vice president of CenterPoint Energy, said power has been restored to more than 1 million homes and businesses since Beryl made landfall Monday. The company expects to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands more customers in the coming days, but others will wait much longer, he said.
The Category 1 hurricane, the lowest level, knocked out power to about 2.7 million customers after making landfall in Texas on Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.
CenterPoint Energy has struggled to restore power to affected customers, who say they are frustrated that a relatively weak storm caused such disruption in the middle of summer.
Beryl has been blamed for at least eight deaths in the United States — one in Louisiana, one in Vermont and six more in Texas. It had previously left 11 dead during its passage through the Caribbean.
Though relatively weak compared to other hurricanes to hit Houston in recent years, it managed to knock out power to much of the nation’s fourth-largest city during a period of stifling heat and humidity.
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