HOUSTON — Acting Texas Governor Dan Patrick pledged Tuesday that CenterPoint will be held accountable for how it prepared for Hurricane Beryl.
“Right now Jeremy (Rogalski), if they made mistakes, we don’t know if they did or not, if they made mistakes beforehand, than that will be addressed by the PUC (Public Utility Commission of Texas), that’s their job, and by the state legislature,” Patrick said at a news briefing at the Galveston County Office of Emergency Management.
KHOU 11 Investigates reported Monday that unlike in some past hurricanes, CenterPoint did not stage mutual assistance workers in Houston before Beryl made landfall.
“I want to clarify that one particular point,” said CenterPoint Director of Communications Alyssia Oshodi. “While we did not have our crews that we had requested staged in Houston, we did have them in nearby locations,” she said.
When pressed for more details on those locations, Oshodi said she would look into that and provide an update. In a subsequent email, she wrote “crews were positioned in locations where they would be safe when the storm hit.”
Watch the extended interview with CenterPoint Director of Communications Alyssia Oshodi:
CenterPoint also confirmed to KHOU 11 Investigates that prior to Beryl’s arrival, the electricity provider requested only 2,500 outside workers to come to affected areas. After the hurricane moved through, the company requested many more boots on the ground—about 12,000 total outside repair workers.
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“I think what the case was is we relied on information that we had at the time,” Oshodi said. “And so we appropriately prepared for what the event felt, what we felt the event would be. It was something different with more impact and so we quickly ramped up the resources that we needed to respond."
How many of those resources had actually arrived Tuesday afternoon was unclear. In separate news conferences and in writing, the company gave three conflicting numbers—5,300 mutual aid workers, 7,500 and the full 12,000 it requested.
At its peak, 2.7 million CenterPoint customers were left powerless from Hurricane Beryl. Acting Governor Patrick said despite a trajectory that shifted north, the threat to the densely-populated Greater Houston area was clear.
“I’ll simply say this, that any thought that people were surprised that this storm would come to Houston, is shocking to me,” Patrick said.
The acting governor said state leaders will have a post-analysis of the event, including what additional repair crews CenterPoint requested and when they were asked to come in.
“But today Jeremy, I’m not looking at what they didn’t do, or should have done on Thursday or Friday or Saturday, I’m looking at what they’re going to do now and how fast are they going to get their crews out,” Patrick said. “Because now we’re in the lifesaving business.”