MISSION BEND, Texas — A Houston-area neighborhood continued to experience outages last week even after they expected power to be on following resiliency improvements by CenterPoint Energy.
KHOU 11 News spoke with Cynthia Fisher last week about an outage that lasted from Tuesday morning through Wednesday night. After the report aired, Fisher told us she and others in the neighborhood received a phone call from CenterPoint.
“[The CenterPoint representative] apologized for what I had gone through with, lack of notice and the length of the power being out,” Fisher said.
But then Fisher and her neighbors experienced another prolonged outage of approximately 14 hours over the weekend.
“What they have done to my neighbors is wrong, period,” Fisher told KHOU 11 News. “And it could have been handled a lot better.”
Other neighbors said the power went out on and off between Wednesday and Saturday.
“It was stifling hot,” Gregory Walls, a neighbor, said.
He recalls the past week experiencing the outages.
Walls lives with his wife, Shirley, along with his daughter and grandchild.
The outages left them uncertain as food and medicine that needed refrigeration is likely to have to be thrown out. They also did not know if they needed to make plans to stay elsewhere.
During the first outage last week, they spent time at a relative’s and then were offered a hotel stay by CenterPoint this past weekend, which they accepted.
“We don't have a problem with them having to upgrade, you got to do that, do it,” Walls said. “But you've got to give people enough notice, so that they can make some kind of arrangement.”
Across the street, Jerry Hastings recounted suffering a medical emergency during the first prolonged outage.
“I was close to a heat stroke and my wife took care of that by putting Dr. Peppers and Cokes under my armpits and neck,” Hastings said.
During the second set of outages, the Hastings did not risk waiting in their home.
“The next time it was out, we didn't get past it, we went out to a motel and we just set that out,” Hastings said.
CenterPoint told KHOU 11 News last week that the nearly two-day outage between Tuesday and Wednesday resulted from contract linemen working on improving infrastructure as part of its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative.
The initiative includes three phases, with the first phase focusing on immediate and short-term goals.
Those include vegetation management, pole replacement and other infrastructure changes set to be completed by Aug. 31. Governor Gregg Abbott pushed the company to accelerate its original timeline.
CenterPoint sent KHOU 11 News the following statement:
Since earlier this month, CenterPoint Energy crews and contractors have been deployed across Greater Houston focusing on the first phase of our Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, which includes an accelerated timeline to execute specific actions to strengthen our electric infrastructure. This work has included installing more storm-resilient poles, trimming or removing higher-risk vegetation, and installing automated devices to reduce the number of storm-related outages for the benefit of our customers and communities.
At the same time, our crews and contractors have been focused on our important day-to-day work to support system reliability and service to our customers. Over the weekend, CenterPoint crews conducted repairs to the electrical system in Mission Bend. This work included the replacement of two transformers, resulting in temporary outages for our customers in this area. We apologize to our customers for the inconveniences these outages may have caused. To help mitigate the impact, we reached out to several customers to offer them accommodations until the repairs could be completed.
CenterPoint added they aim to inform customers ahead of time of planned outages for resiliency work through the use of door hangers as well as calls, texts and emails.