Abbott Demands Probe Into Power Outages

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More than 2 million Texans lost power when Hurricane Beryl hit the Texas coast, and Gov. Greg Abbott wants to know why. The Austin American-Statesman reported Abbott has ordered the Public Utility Commission to conduct an immediate study into why the Houston area has again been hit by widespread power outages.

“I want to find out, was there a structural flaw with regard to the electrical delivery system?” Abbott said. “Was that the cause of it? If so, what needs to be done to shore up, or was this a personnel issue of not having enough power personnel in all the right locations to get power back up?”

CenterPoint Energy is the primary electricity transmission company serving the Houston area. Its CEO, Jason Ryan, appeared before the PUC last week and was questioned about the outages.

“To our customers that not only have power out but have significant property damage from the trees we talked about coming up from the roots, our hearts go out to you and our hearts go out to our community,” Ryan said.

As of Sunday morning, CenterPoint’s website indicated 461,247 customers were still without power, nearly a week after Beryl made landfall.

To date, 67 counties have been approved for federal disaster assistance, while other counties may be included as damage assessments are concluded. Those counties in the initial list are: Anderson, Angelina, Aransas, Austin, Bowie, Brazoria, Brazos, Burleson, Calhoun, Cameron, Camp, Cass, Chambers, Cherokee, Colorado, Dewitt, Fayette, Fort Bend, Freestone, Galveston, Goliad, Gregg, Grimes, Hardin, Harris, Harrison, Hidalgo, Houston, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Kenedy, Kleberg, Lavaca, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Madison, Marion, Matagorda, Milam, Montgomery, Morris, Nacogdoches, Newton, Nueces, Orange, Panola, Polk, Refugio, Robertson, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, San Patricio, Shelby, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur, Victoria, Walker, Waller, Washington, Webb, Wharton, and Willacy.