Preview (opens in a new tab)The devastating May 16 storm brought sustained winds in the northern part of Houston of more than 110 miles per hour — or the equivalent of a Class 2 hurricane. However, unlike Category 2 Hurricane Ike in 2008, Houstonians had only 15 minutes to prepare.
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A week after hurricane-force winds swept across the Houston area, more than 27,000 area residents remained without power — down from more than 920,000 shortly after the May 16 weather event — according to an update on recovery efforts from CenterPoint chief executive Jason Ryan.
Speaking May 23 before the Texas Public Utility Commission, Mr. Ryan explained that the devastating storm brought sustained winds in the northern part of the city of more than 110 miles per hour — or the equivalent of a Class 2 hurricane. However, unlike Category 2 Hurricane Ike in 2008, Houstonians had only 15 minutes to prepare, he said.
Downtown Damage
Downtown Houston suffered particularly heavy damage, with straight winds in the area exceeding 100 MPH and blowing out more than 2,500 office windows — including 500 from CenterPoint’s own building. But even still, the utility managed to begin recovery efforts just hours after the late afternoon storm and as of May 23 had restored about 140 miles of transmission lines and 2,000 distribution poles. All schools in the Houston area also now have power.
Of the remaining outages as of May 23, about 6,000 were because of circuit-level failures, 20,000 because of fuse-level failures, and 5,000 because of transformer issues. He said recovery efforts had begun on 7 p.m. on May 16, with CenterPoint mobilizing approximately 5,000 assistant emergency crews, and will continue on a behind-the-scenes basis after all power is restored — perhaps for additional weeks or months.
Mr. Ryan also said that CenterPoint has been able to communicate with many customers about the ongoing recovery efforts through its power alert service. CenterPoint also has delivered excess supplies from staging sites to local communities, he said.