Melissa Hunziker, from Houston, is just about coping in the heat with no power: “Our house is actually pretty cool, right now, but we know that will change quickly ahead.”
“We’ve got a portable fan that is chargeable battery operated. So that helped last night, but we won’t probably stay another night,” she said.
It’s not just the power shortage, but the loss of cellphone connectivity that is hard to deal with, making emergency information hard to reach, Hunziker said.
Kassie Rieger and Keaton Cravens were out in Houston to offer help to those in need. “We just hope people are saying, safe and doing what they can to help their neighbors that they have the best possible to do that,” Rieger told NBC News.
CenterPoint Energy, the main supplier for the Greater Houston area, said in a statement Tuesday night that it had restored power to 850,000 customers since Beryl arrived, one third of the total affected. The company said its staff walked 4,500 miles on foot to check circuits, with help from helicopter and drone surveillance.
More than half of the 2.1 million energy customers in Harris County were without power on Tuesday afternoon, the company’s online tracker shows. The main elements of CenterPoint’s energy system remain intact, the statement said, including its transmission towers and substations.