Working with reinforcements from the Houston area, CenterPoint Energy Tuesday had restored power to about 90 percent of the residents and businesses whose electricity was knocked out by Hurricane Claudette. Still, CenterPoint has some more work to do today.
About 70 workers from Bellaire and Greenspoint, along with contractors, were working on restoring power across the county on Tuesday, while smaller crews worked through the night.
Lightning struck transformers, and Claudette’s forceful winds sent debris flying, downing some power lines early Tuesday.
Calling won’t speed things up. CenterPoint and other companies that manage the wires and poles know which circuits are out and the customers on those circuits who are without service.
But people should call if others in the neighborhood had lights restored but they had not. About 10,000 CenterPoint meters in Galveston County were affected by 10 a.m. Tuesday, with the island’s West End hit particularly hard, said David S. Murphy, the Galveston service area manager for CenterPoint. By 4 p.m., the number of meters affected was 3,908. He estimated that 85 to 90 percent of the customers who experienced outages would have power today.
CenterPoint, which has about 60,000 customers in Galveston County and manages the wires and poles for retail electric providers such as Reliant Resources, counts a meter as a customer, meaning that while 10,000 meters are down, each meter can serve multiple customers.
“It’s not pretty right now,” Murphy had said of the island’s West End power problems.
Late Tuesday, Pirates’ Beach subdivision was still a problem, while some West End homes had power again.
CenterPoint had been unable to estimate how long the power outages would last.
Crews were working on circuits that served the highest concentration of customers first, and then worked on individual power outages. Smaller crews worked through the night, Murphy said.
A large number of residents and businesses near Offatts Bayou, a body of water just north of the Scholes International Airport and Moody Gardens, were reporting power outages Tuesday. Claudette knocked out the power at the airport early Tuesday, but workers restored power there by afternoon.
Moody Gardens was not reporting power outages.
The power went out in parts of Dickinson about 8 a.m. Tuesday, and police in Kemah and Clear Lake Shores began using four-wheel drive vehicles to navigate the streets as local officials watched Hurricane Claudette draw closer to land.
J.K. Langlois, who lives in the Oaks area of Dickinson, said her area lost power early Tuesday.
“We’re always the first block to go out,” Langlois said.
After two hours without electricity, Langlois said she planned to go to a friend’s house in the Chantilly Bayou area near Hughes Road where the power continued to flow without interruption.
Texas-New Mexico Power Co., which essentially serves the eastern half of the county — with the exception of Kemah, Clear Lake Shores and Bacliff — was reporting damage to its transmission and distribution facilities and outages for 150 individual customers as of 7 p.m. Tuesday. That total included two apartment complexes in the Texas City and La Marque area. Texas-New Mexico serves Texas City, Dickinson, La Marque, Friendswood and League City.
Laura Baumgartner, customer relations manager with Texas-New Mexico, said the company has an emergency plan that includes extra manpower, trucks and equipment to aid in restoring electrical services.
