Ain’t no party like a hurricane party because a hurricane party doesn’t stop. Even if you want it to.
In April, I sat at Rice Stadium for a Roughnecks game the day after a tornado outbreak destroyed parts of my hometown in Nebraska. It was difficult to find a way to help and be supportive, but it was a gorgeous day in Houston and it was difficult to look past the coincidence that I just so happened to be sitting next to the family of Khalil and Carlos Davis, both Cornhusker alum. What are the chances? I chatted briefly with their uncle, also a Nebraska alum. We shared some brief camaraderie about being former track and field athletes in Lincoln while I privately worried about my home, stressing over how to find a way to help from the Gulf Coast.
Three different EF3 tornadoes destroyed homes from Lincoln to Council Bluffs. The tornado outbreak stretched from North Texas to Nebraska, with the brunt of the damage occurring north of the Red River. Yet, Texas power outages were more than double of the harder hit states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. The Weather Channel reported approximately 29,000 power outages in Texas, as opposed to the 11,000 in Nebraska, which was experiencing the worst natural disaster since the floods of 2019, both supposedly once-in-a-decade events. I bring it up to illustrate the fragility of the Texas power grid.
Texans are supposedly all about independence and liberty, to the extent of being somehow unexpectedly bum rushed by a storm we’ve known was coming for weeks. Speaking of bums, HPD should be making their rounds here in the next few weeks to round up all these “campers.” May the Evangelical God forbid homelessness in the face of disasters, Amen. I suppose it’s quintessentially Texan. Afterall, Sam Houston basically stumbled upon victory at the Battle of San Jacinto because of the thankless help of what legend states was either a renowned hooker or a beautiful flower. But I won’t carry my criticism of the police into this article, this week they lost one of their own to senseless violence. Forgive my deviation from the point, but all of my Yellow Roses snapped off at the stem during a 30 minute derecho a few weeks ago that knocked out 40% of power in Harris County, allegedly. Then Beryl came.
So when Category 1 Hurricane Beryl approached the coast after leveling communities on Gulf Islands such as Carriacou, Petite Martinique, and Jamaica it was like watching a slow moving steamroller driven by Mike Meyers head our way, either unable or unwilling to prepare in any official capacity. To live here and expect the powers that be to provide essentially anything except lip service, massive police budgets, book bans, and fake culture wars is to live in a State of Delusion.
According to the Chronicle, up to 11.4 inches fell across the Houston metro over the course of several hours. That’s compared to 11 inches in 3 hours for the Memorial Day storm in 2015, 13-16 inches over 12 hours for the Tax Day storm in 2016, and 47 inches over four days for Harvey in 2017. What’s unique about Beryl, though, is the flood systems remained intact due to the brevity of the thing, and that Beryl’s remnants continued overland to kill 2 people in Vermont due to flooding and cause a rare tornado in Western New York.
The Associated Press cited PowerOutage.us, saying nearly 2.7 million people were experiencing power outages at peak Beryl, as opposed to 2.2 million reported here in Texas. Centerpoint struggled as they did to keep the power on as well as inform the public. “It’s shockingly bad how much the utilities actually know about their grid,” said Bob Marshall, the CEO and a co-founder of Whisker Labs. “They don’t have the technology, the sensors and the capability to understand what’s going on in real time, and to do it in a reliable way.” Further, outside of Harris County and Centerpoint’s jurisdiction, up to 72,000 Entergy customers – a company equally owned by subsidiaries of Entergy and Koch Industries, Inc. – in Galveston county might not get power restored until July 22, according to Galveston County Daily News.
Back in Harris County restaurants and bars have become unofficial cooling centers and offices, demonstrated by me right now, writing from Porch Swing Pub on Washington over a round of one of my favorite vices. There are several official cooling centers (NRG is housing 250 hospital patients despite suffering roof damage) spread throughout the city, see the Houston Chronicle’s coverage for more information. Half a million people are still expected to be without power well into next week. At first 7 people were reported dead but at the time of writing that number has jumped to 13.
The cost in lives isn’t necessarily a metric commonly used to assess damage in the United States, so I will use a language even the capitalists can understand. A heat wave in 2023 cost the state nearly $10 billion, according to an analysis by The Perryman Group. A heat wave where we didn’t see widespread outages. As mentioned above, Hurricane Beryl continued overland and through New England, the cost of which is estimated at up to $32 billion nationwide. Really makes Centerpoint’s $2 billion resiliency plan look small. None of that is to mention the out of pocket costs for Houstonians. Estimates by a property data firm named CoreLogic, claimed the storm may have caused up to $600 million in losses to insured properties in Harris County, and statewide losses could reach $1.5 billion, which is an extremely crude estimate.
It’s not so simple, however, says Lynn Webber in a letter to the editor to the Houston Chronicle. According to Centerpoint and Click2Houston there are 3,700 circuit miles of transmission lines and 57,000 circuit miles of overhead and underground distribution lines, all of which must be walked. An estimated 1,400 damaged circuits have occurred across the system. A Centerpoint company spokesperson said that 8,500 miles had already been walked to assess the damage with 2,000 poles and 6,000 trees being addressed. Mrs. Webber also cites the cost of burying lines, ranging from $2 million per mile to $9 million per mile depending on who you ask. 12,000 linemen from across the country have been brought in to help remedy the situation, with reports of disorganization preventing any work from taking place at all. It does sound costly, Mrs. Webber, but not to a multi-billion dollar company that has seen nothing but increased profit since at least 2020 and has received millions in subsidies from the government. The cost is high and the job is difficult Mrs. Webber but between the profit margins and the subsidies, I very pointedly suppose that it doesn’t add up to 13 lives here in Houston, at least 2 in Vermont, and $32 billion in damages across several states. Did Centerpoint kill people? I guess not, but they are a large part of the critical infrastructure we rely on to weather the storm.
Another thing Mrs Lynn Webber doesn’t touch on is the burden of stress equally fragile electrical grids and political systems put on other forms of critical infrastructure. Houston had no backup plans or generators, it seems, experienced gas line shortages, cell service outages, boil water notices, and undue stress on essential workers. You know, the ‘heroes’ of the pandemic, like healthcare professionals, fast food workers, grocers, gas station employees, etc. All of this piled on top of disaster problems like destroyed or unsafe housing and the mold and contamination that comes with flooding. I find myself wondering what fraction of Centerpoint’s almost $7 billion in profit last year could be invested to prevent the type of reactionary clustershuck that put undue burden on not only linemen – highly skilled jobs that require significant training on top of an already dangerous job – but almost all other forms of the cities infrastructure. It’s going to need to be a massive overhaul unless you want a once-in-a-decade environmental event every couple of years.
Centerpointless is nothing new, but Texans revel in the fact that it’s now documented on one of the state’s largest and most visible interstate routes (I-10). I still view myself as somewhat of an outsider in Houston, but I’ve lived here long enough (nearing a decade now) to recognize the feigned optimism of relying on public utilities in the Lone Star State. It’s a wholly unnecessary dichotomy. Houston Strong indicates the capability of individuals to sustain themselves, recover, and thrive again in the face of disaster. The need to bind together in crisis could be mitigated, however, by binding together to develop robust and resilient systems instead. “I think we could do a better job of communicating expectations with our customers and I personally own that,” Centerpoint CEO Jason Wells was quoted saying in a Chronicle article.
On a good day, Centerpoint isn’t anyone’s favorite. The week prior to Beryl their “system was down,” for the summer housing rush in addition to outages from a “rare” derecho that’s only supposed to happen every 4 years. The magnitude of the storm doesn’t match the magnitude of the disaster here in Houston and the frequency of these types of disasters is exponentially alarming. A spokesperson for Centerpoint said, “Beryl brought 83 mph gusts to Bush Intercontinental Airport, surpassing highs for Ike.” However, “more Houston-area customers lost power Monday than any other event in CenterPoint’s history,” according to the Chronicle. The Chronicle also speculates that there’s a 1 in 5 chance of another major hurricane making landfall in Texas this year. It’s become painfully clear that unless you’re prepared to go off-grid, out of state, or – if you’re the Governor or a Senator – out of the country; electricity providers and distributors, similar to the public officials, cannot be relied on.
Yet, Houston Strong persists in the realization that nobody is going to save us except ourselves. Alright, so it’s settled, we’ll sweep through the local and state governments with a wave of progressive change that will make Beto O’Rourke turn and tap dance to the tune of the State Pledge. All 6% of us. Hi-de-ho bubba, those are Trump inauguration numbers. Absolutely the best for the biggest ego of all the stars on the banner. If everything is bigger in Texas, then so is the trauma and stress related to these disasters, political complacency too.
The Houston community beautifully unites in times like these. Highlighted by Bun B’s Trill Burger spot giving out food, citizens and neighbors developing a disaster economy on a dime embodies the epitome of Houston Strong. While it’s heartwarming to see residents of the city show compassion, our economy cannot sustain such consistent interruptions to stability. The year after one of our driest years on record, Houston and much of the Plains are being bludgeoned consecutively and repeatedly by alternating blows from Mother Nature from floods in her right and heat waves in her left. Then, every hundred years or so a kick to the genitals with a Pandemic. Mother Nature is trained in hand-to-hand combat. We can continue to fight back, but the “flaws and the cracks…straws in the stack,” will eventually rupture our foundational infrastructure.
Like Jessica Darrow’s character Luisa from the Disney movie Encanto, we don’t “ask how hard the work is,” but “under the surface…the pressure is like a drip.” Houstonians are definitely reeling from the fear and stress that inevitably come from moments of uncertainty, like not having access to information, air conditioning, or even access to power. It was and still is serious enough to attract Federal Disaster Relief as well as funds for individuals once Greg Abbott could be reached in Asia. Strange how he can find the time to pardon a white supremacist who murdered someone, yet be unavailable to accept disaster funds from President Biden. It reeks like Ted Cruz in Cancun.
Police and politicians in power were slow to react, although Dan Patrick was able to get off his hands long enough to extend food replacement relief. Rep Sylcia Garcia was quoted being “mad as hell,” while Greg Abbot acknowledged that we “should not be losing power,” and that the appropriate steps need to be taken “to make sure events like this never happen again.” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick echoed a similar sentiment by saying, “people have a right to be extremely frustrated with CenterPoint.”
While people wait weeks and months for FEMA and insurance and other forms of relief that trickle down through bureaucracy, Houstonians exude Luisa’s characteristics. We step up for each other, it’s truly a beautiful moment of unity. If only we didn’t have to suffer in order to unite. It’s all ‘just lip service’ according to Northside residents. 63 year old Dana Jones told the Chronicle: “For years we’ve been talking to our leaders, talking to public works, talking to FEMA — it’s exhausting. It feels like we’ve been fighting for so long and the city just doesn’t want to do anything.” This sentiment has been echoed in Kashmere Gardens in Northeast Houston as well, where residents told the Chronicle they are “consistently neglected.” It reminds me of of the term ‘environmental racism’ from disputes over concrete plants in 2022 and the disproportionate reliability of critical infrastructure in historically Black and Latino communities. All it took was a recommendation from Chronicler Jow Sewing to take a ‘cool, aimless drive’ while the power was out to see that the power came on around the money first. Texas is blessed with absentee politicians, ones that are one of our only tools to hold the fragile systems of heavily subsidized industries accountable
Unless we are smart about preparing for the worst of Mother Nature’s blows, assets outside the floodplain will end up underwater too. . As the Chronicle’s Editorial Board stated, our fight against a monopolized and deregulated energy market is “as if to remind us that we human beings are an afterthought to an industry.” They go on to describe what they call “polytrauma” of being a Houstonian. If it’s not the Hurricane, it’s the traffic, or the heat. We shall not escape into the Astro Amber sunset without scars. “We are not smart or even strong,” the Chronicle Editorial Board wrote, “we are siloed and singular.”
The grid still stands on the same flimsy stilts of deregulation and monopoly power that it did in 2017 for Harvey and the Freeze in 2021. I would ask if we learned anything, but I’ve been following Texas politics long enough to know that knowledge has nothing to do with it, not when you can accept bribes from skimping companies to elope to Cancun or Asia. Efficiency yields to money and power in the Gulf Coast. We’re all tired of being Houston Strong with no power, pun intended.
Like when the tornadoes ravaged Nebraska in April as I sat helpless in Rice Stadium watching a minor league football game, our power comes from the aid we divy out amongst ourselves as well as how we channel our anger into progress.
“First came the hurricane, then the morning sun.” – Lil Wayne
