Key Takeaways
- CenterPoint has 2 people in its media communications department to get messaging out
- The company’s Outage Tracker went down because 700,000 people an hour were using it
- All transmission towers have been repaired and new lines will be relaid Wednesday
- The last repairs are in heavily damaged areas and are taking more time
- Just about everyone should have power back up by the end of the day Wednesday
- 5,000 or so crews came from out of the city and state to help with repairs
HOUSTON – During the early hours after Thursday’s derecho-driven, deadly storm, more than 900,000 customers were without power.
The tool we use to track power outages at our homes or in our neighborhoods -- CenterPoint’s Outage Tracker -- went down, which for our viewers, seemed to stoke frustration for an already weary bunch.
At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, 116,689 customers were into their 5th day without power, according to CenterPoint’s website. Power has been restored to more than 800,000.
Day 5 with no power meant no air conditioning again for many folks as temps hit above 90 for the fourth day in a row, with the weather promising to feel even more like an oven as we move toward the holiday weekend.
Some of the comments from our viewers indicate CenterPoint may be in for some reputation repair (see those below).
KPRC 2 Investigative Reporter Bill Spencer had some tough questions for CenterPoint on their response to the storm, after hearing and reading a lot of those frustrating sentiments from viewers. Logan Anderson, Texas Senior Communications Specialist answered those questions.
Here’s what we learned:
Bill Spencer: “My first question to you is at this very moment, because that’s what we care about is what’s happening right now, how many people are still without power? And when do you estimate they will be back online with power?”
Logan Anderson: “So the company estimates we will be substantially complete with restoration by the end of the day tomorrow (Wednesday). Now, substantially complete does not mean that everyone’s power will be on, but also we can’t really guarantee that everyone’s power is on, on any given day. Power is something that does go out. It is something that always requires maintenance and repair. But we do honestly anticipate that everyone or the majority of people who faced an outage caused by the storm will be substantially restored, by the end of the day tomorrow.”
Spencer: “We’re talking about, like, 5 p.m. tomorrow? 8 tomorrow?”
Anderson: “End of the day may mean 11:59, I’m not sure yet. We’re still trying to figure out what, measurements we’re going to use to benchmark that substantially complete with restorations. But we will have more information on that towards the end of the day.”
Spencer: “Okay. CenterPoint Energy. You have 9000 employees. You’re a $38 billion company, and you service 5 or 6 different states across the country. This massive disaster hit us Thursday night. Why did you not set up a media center, a storm center where you would have a media person able to talk to us every hour on the hour throughout this entire disaster? That is an industry standard. That’s what they do in Detroit, New York, Miami, Chicago. The primary power company provides a media center so that you guys are accessible to us. You never did that. You still have not done that. Instead, you’re putting your information online. Why have you not set up a media center? And will you set one up? Now that I am telling you we need one?”
Anderson: “So the reason we haven’t set up a media center is the reason that I’m here with you today. It is because all of our teams have been focused on getting people restored and that is an all-hands-on-deck operation. CenterPoint may have over 9,000 employees, but I will share with you personally, our communications department is a tight-knit, hard-working group. And so we are the people that are responsible for the press releases. We are the people that are responsible for communicating on social media. We are the people that are responsible for updating the website, and we’re also the people that are responsible for communicating with the community and with the media. And so honestly, it has been a lot of work for us.”
Spencer: “How many people on your media team? How many people you have?
Anderson: “How many people do we have total on our staff?”
Spencer: “On your media team.”
Anderson: “I mean, it would depend on how you count our media team. The communications department as a whole has people that can pitch in in different aspects, but right now in Houston, on our external communications team, it is me and one other person.”
Spencer: “Right now it’s two people?”
Anderson: “Yeah.”
Spencer: “Out of 9,000 folks?”
Anderson: “Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, because the vast majority of our employees are line workers and are vegetation management crews and are people who work on getting the power restored.”
Spencer: “But, ma’am, with all due respect, you as a media person, the people who work in the offices, the people who work in communications or advertising, they are not going to be climbing a power pole and fixing lines. They’re not skilled to do that. You’re not skilled to do that.
Anderson: “I know.”
Spencer: “The company would never ask you to do something like that. So you can’t pitch in in that way.”
Anderson: “No, of course I can’t. But that’s where the company’s resources are dedicated. Our finances, the vast majority of the people that this company hires are frontline workers, and we have not prioritized communicating with the media every hour on the hour because we are so focused on communicating with our customers. And I don’t know if you are aware, but the website that we had, our outage tracker is something that we utilize quite a bit as a company. And our outage tracker at a certain point this week, was getting 700,000 hits an hour because people from all over the country wanted to know about the situation that we have here in Houston. And so we had to stop our work, and we had to triage, building microsites and ways to communicate with customers, because communicating with customers is our top priority.”
Spencer: “It should be. It should be. But here’s my question for you. I understand that. And you do have a website up and you have been, I’m sure, staffing it and providing information to that website. The problem is, there are tens of thousands of people who don’t have access to a computer. People who are poor, they don’t even own a computer. People who have computers but couldn’t operate them because there’s no power in their house and they don’t have any internet accessibility, even on their phone, because many of the cell phone towers were knocked out by the power outages. So asking people to rely on just a website, it’s not enough. I mean, isn’t it an industry standard in the electric community for you to provide, real time information to the media. TV people like me, radio people who can provide instant information over the airwaves. I mean, you got to be able to provide one person out of that entire company to communicate with the public.”
Anderson: “We are communicating. We have been communicating with the public. We have been sending regular updates every day.”
Spencer: “On the website?”
Anderson: “No, we have been sending press releases, and those press releases have been going to your newsroom as well. I’m sorry if they’re not giving them to you.”
Spencer: “How often would you send out a press release? Every hour?”
Anderson: “No, we’re not sending out press releases every hour we send out, we attempt to send out a morning update, an afternoon update and an evening update. But we don’t always make those goals because, as I said, sometimes we do have to triage things like our website going down and people needing to write content to put up a new website.”
Spencer: “Okay. All right. Would you say, from what you know, would you say that CenterPoint has operated the same way that the major power companies would operate in Detroit or New York or Chicago?”
Anderson: “I mean, what I can say is that CenterPoint is really dedicated to giving Houston the story and that we have dedicated so much time and energy. We have had mutual assistance crews come in from utilities all across the state and country, and we are really grateful to have so much help as we continue to go through these efforts and we’re hoping to have the rest of our restoration substantially complete by the end of the day tomorrow.”
Spencer: “I can understand that. And that’s that’s that’s great. Can you tell me how many mutual aid, in other words, crews from other states and cities you brought in? Do you have a number?”
Anderson: “Yeah, yeah, we have about 5,000, but approximate. But there are about 5,000 mutual aid workers from utilities across the state and the country.”
Spencer: “We realize the scope of the problem. And you lost ten transmission towers were flattened by the winds, were brought to the ground, were folded like paper. And the major transmission lines, those are that’s a big thing. So I mean, the scope of this power outages, massive. You feel that you’ll have everything taken care of, in other words, the majority of people will have power by tomorrow night?”
Anderson: “So about the transmission towers. I can tell you a couple of different things. Number one, I can tell you that thanks to the amazing hard work and dedication of our mutual assistance crews who came in, took the mandatory rest, and then were able to get trained the first day, get their safety materials and join our crews on the field to do shift work. We’ve been working 24 hours and those transmission towers are now back up. They’re standing. I was out there a couple of days ago and the transmission towers that everyone is seeing mangled have been fully restored, which is really fantastic. And they will be replaying the lines over the weekend. But even when those transmission towers were down, our grid allowed us to take the, substations and the other areas that were drawing power from those transmission towers and reroute them to other grids that had not lost power. So nobody experienced an outage because of those transmission towers being down for very long.”
Spencer: “And I understand you guys have been working very, very hard. Tell me this. At this point, you have roughly something like 136,000 people that are still without power? How many people have you been able to restore over the last 24 hours? You have a figure?”
Anderson: “I don’t have the figure off the top of my head. I can get it for you. It’s on our website. But I can tell you that, we have been really getting into our restorations in the past couple of days. And as we continue to do these last couple of restorations, we’re seeing that the hardest-hit areas, the areas where people still aren’t restored, are the places where we’re seeing the most damage. And so we are seeing that it’s taking longer. Not longer than we anticipated but longer than previous restorations have. The last little bit is going to be the part that’s the most tricky, but we are hopeful that we will have it all substantially complete by tomorrow.”
Spencer: “One other thing. We have gotten a lot of mail on our website, Click2Houston.com from very, very angry CenterPoint customers who have said that they are checking the website and yet there are many inaccuracies. There was a person in this one area, that is called Enchanted Valley, Enchanted Valley Estates in Cyprus. According to the map, they were supposed to have power up yesterday. And they’re just starting to get it back now. So that was an inaccurate, recording. Have there been a lot of inaccuracies, or would you say it’s been minimal?”
Anderson: “And honestly, with the restoration map, we are learning as we go and we are communicating information with the customers and with the community as we go too. So I have not gone back and looked at the accuracies of the map, and how it’s been matching up for actual restoration times. I can tell you something that the team has been encountering, especially yesterday and today as we get out here, is electric infrastructure that is buried under debris, whole trees that have been pulled up by the roots and just deposited across roads and buildings. We have found that, because it was heavy rain in Houston before the storm, it loosened the soil. And so, a whole bunch of vegetation was just yanked out, along with a lot of our equipment. So these last, restorations are going to be the most challenging. They’re going to be the ones that require the most, singular focus, by our team members. Like, it’s not going to be a crew restoring a circuit or a few, it’s going to be line to line. But we are determined to get it done.”
Spencer: “Okay, please understand that there’s just a lot of anger within the community that we are feeling because we’re getting it sent to us from angry customers who are saying, you know, ‘Why can’t we get some accurate information? This information, a lot of what we’re seeing is wrong.’ But we understand that this is a disaster, right? A massive disaster. Is this the largest disaster that you’ve had to deal with in your time?”
Anderson: “So I, I’ve been a Houstonian my entire life, but I have been with CenterPoint for about six months. And as a CenterPoint employee, this is my first time really being on this side of the table in a disaster. And I can tell you that it is absolutely remarkable to see the work that happens, from these teams. You know, Thursday night when the call goes out that we’re going to need help, the team immediately gets to work because we asked for 3,000 mutual assistance crews to come in. And once they’ve set the call, they need places to stay and to immediately rest. They need fuel, they need fuel for the cars, they need, work plans and maps of the city because they don’t know where to go. And so watching the logistical operation that has to take place so that these guys can come out here and not worry about anything, but doing their job and getting people restored has been remarkable. And so I am just I’m really proud to say that I’m a CenterPoint employee and I understand people’s frustration. I do, you know, we weren’t anticipating this. If we could have had, two weeks of foresight, maybe we would have done things a lot differently. But what we’re trying our best to do now is to communicate with customers as often as we can with the most accurate information we can. And it’s not always going to be perfect, but we are working as hard as we can, and every day we have gotten more and more granular. Our information has gotten more and more accurate and more usable for customers. And so as long as we keep pushing towards that, I hope that people will be patient with us through this process.”
Spencer: “Tell me one more thing, because, again, I have friends, and I have friends in the Detroit area who work for DTE Energy in Detroit. And every time we have had disasters far smaller than this one, they do set up a media center, a storm center, where they provide an on-camera media spokesperson open to the media, available to the media on a 24-hour basis for the length of that disaster. Can you promise me or tell me that in the future, the next time one of these disasters happens, that you will try your best to convince the people at CenterPoint to open a 24-hour storm center to communicate with the media.”
Anderson: “I mean, I don’t think I need to convince the people at CenterPoint to communicate. I think that our main focus in this and in any disaster is always going to be on restoration, restoration first, and it’s always going to be on customers and community first. I can tell you that I hope that we are able to communicate at all times in a way that really keeps people up to date. But when the next storm hits, we’re going to be focused on restorations just like we are right now.”
Spencer: “I realize you got to be focused on restoration, but there has to be a few people that can communicate in real time, to the media, so that we can communicate with all the people out there who don’t have access to a computer, who don’t have access to the internet, what is going on, because they need the information. The public part of the industry standard for electric companies is to keep the public informed throughout every disaster. Would you agree with that?”
Anderson: “I do, and I understand the want for the most up-to-date information. But I can tell you, even if we were to make a media person available for updates every hour on the hour, some media person would come out every hour and say our crews would not have a chance to get back to us because they are out restoring. We have a system of updates, and so I get information at the same time that I then filter it through and go out. We don’t have a system of hourly updates, because our teams don’t stop every 45 minutes to call in to headquarters and give us new numbers. They are out working hard.”
Spencer: “No, I understand all that. I do understand that. I’m just saying that there needs to be another way to communicate with the public. Other than a website website.”
Anderson: “We also have we’re also communicating with customers via email via our Power Alert service. We are communicating with customers via, social media channels Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn Nextdoor. We have customers who are enrolled in our power alert service, which will tell you if your lights go out and then give you estimated times of restoration via text, phone call or email. I’ve been getting blast messages from us as often as possible. We understand that not everyone has access to the website that we built, and we are trying to communicate with our customers in every way possible, but it is also something that we have to balance against the fact that our crews are out working. And so as often as we can communicate, we are, but we are also letting them focus on their work.”
Spencer: “Thank you. Thank you very much, Logan. Logan Anderson, I really appreciate your time. Again, there’s just a lot of anger and frustration in the community, especially with people still wondering when their power is going to be on and the heat contributes to it, too.”
Anderson: “I understand.”
Spencer: “You’ve lived here your whole life. You know.”
Anderson: “I’ve lived here my whole life. You know, I lost power for three days. And so it is it’s difficult to go home and sleep in a, you know, 85-degree room and then get up at 5 a.m. and go back to an incident command center. But it is not even a hair as challenging as the incredible work that I’m watching these linemen and vegetation management professionals do every single day. And so I am patient with the team as we continue to move on, and I hope that Houston will stay patient as we try to get things up and running.”
Spencer:“And I agree with you, my hat’s off to all of the workers who have sacrificed so much time over the last five days and worked in incredible conditions with the heat and the mosquitoes and and the danger of walking around the power lines. Thank you again. Thank you for joining me.”
Anderson: “I really appreciate it.”
Customer Sentiment
Here’s a sampling of some viewer comments on KPRC 2′s social sites and website:
“A 20-minute storm costs 5 days without power, which makes it difficult to explain how a city as large as Houston would handle a disaster larger than this storm if the situation gets worse.” - Linda Lemons
“The State & Federal Government Told Center Point after IKE that they needed to Bury the infrastructure underground like it is in most other Areas & Europe. They never did it & now you’re seeing the results.” - Narhano441
“When you want to appear that you are giving detailed information and you really are not, just call CenterPoint for advice….” - Bobbyjohn
“They have done a horrible job. They could at least issue vouchers, food stamps or money for us to pay for food at a restaurant. My account is now overdrawn trying to survive.” - pennylane
“This map is embarrassing for Centerpoint. Not only isn’t inaccurate, but it looks like someone with inexperience made it in Microsoft paint. Do better Centerpoint! Y’all are really showing how unprepared you are for hurricane season! Half of my street has been restored since Sunday night. The neighbors to the left and right of me have elderly people and an infant sitting in the heat and darkness. DO BETTER!!” - Kasey Patin-DeCuir