Storm the Field

Damn, that's brutal. Only 45K outages left per latest update. You're in the final 1.5%. What neighborhood?

My pool is a lovely shade of green after not having the pumps running for 8 days. Pool guy has his work cut out for him tomorrow.

Oh well, ain't my building.

All of our first floor window offices had water come in through the floor to ceiling windows, but apparently not bad enough to rip out carpet. Building had those damn dehumidifier fans running 24 hours a day from Tuesday morning through Friday night. The noise made it impossible to get anything done. Fortunately we had some extra space on a different floor so i was able to temporarily relocate and moved back in to my normal office yesterday morning.

Posting tonight from my home computer for the first time in 8.5 days. Power came back on sometime between when I left my office and pulled into my driveway around 6:30. All I was planning to do was pop in and pack a bag while sweating buckets and then head over to my brother's house for the night. Immediately hauled ass to go pick up my dogs from the kennel before the cutoff between daycare and overnight boarding. Never been so happy to see a front porch light on in my life. Just started a load of laundry with a shit-eating grin on my face. Still uncomfortably warm in the house, but it has already dropped from 85 to 80. We ended up being in the final 3% of addresses without power before getting restored. I stayed optimistic and held up pretty well for the most part, but yesterday when we started getting the "maybe not until Friday" texts, it finally broke me. Spent the evening alternating between pissed and depressed. It is my fervent hope that I was the last Surly poster still in the dark.

Still in a nested outage, but heard some scuttlebutt among neighbors about a half hour ago that there is finally some activity on the street north of me, which appears to be the source of the problem. Not 100% getting my hopes up just yet, but best news I've heard in a while. Also lost power for several days and had pool pumps freeze and crack during Uri. After losing power for 6 days following the derecho, we decided "never again" and bit the bullet on a whole-home generator. Unfortunately, we didn't account for their being another massive outage less than 2 months later, before installation could be completed. Next freak storm though!!!!!!!!!!

113K now. Final 5%!

Apparently it's monsoon season in Houston the rest of July starting this weekend. Forecast 50-60% rain chances and highs below 90 every day from 7/19-29.

Forgot to mention my favorite part of today's update. Stopped by my house to grab some clothes this morning. Centerpoint contractors in my backyard finally installing the 2nd gas meter for the generac we ordered roughly 6 weeks ago!

We always stay at Marriot properties. Previously when we've needed long-term lodging (waiting for our house to be finished, derecho...etc.), we've stayed at the Residence Inn over in the Galleria. It's a nice area, but kind of old, not updated hotel. Shitty old TV's. Spent the last 2 night at the Townplace Suites off Rice and Fournace. Sketchier area, but more updated, nicer place. Checked out this morning and went ahead and boarded the dogs. Gonna crash with my brother and SIL tonight and see what tomorrow brings. May just keep boarding dogs and staying with friends/family as it's cheaper than getting a room somewhere that takes pets. Confirmed last night that we're in a nested outage (~22 houses affected) and have zero priority for restoration. Could be anywhere from today to Friday.

Congrats man. Still waiting for the good news. Was hoping for today, but tomorrow is getting more and more likely. Glad we kept our hotel room booked for another evening. Down to 196K outages. At this point, no less than 92% of people whose power went out will get restored before me.

Latest CP update a few minutes ago is that there are still 222K households affected out of 2.258M total that were affected by Beryl. Looks like I made the final 10%. What a dubious distinction.

7:25 this morning made it 7 full days for me. After spending the weekend at my folks' house, wife and I checked into an extended stay hotel with our dogs last night, and we're currently booked for tonight as well. Fortunately our kennel is back open so was able to drop the dogs off at daycare today. I've stayed pretty optimistic this whole time and have held up pretty well, but it's gonna get ugly if we're not back in the house at some point tomorrow.

Same here. North side of 38th and south side of 39th are still out. South side of 38th has had power since Tuesday. The map says the rest of GOOF should be up and running by end of day tomorrow. There was actually some action in the neighborhood yesterday. A handful of small pockets got power back. I'm talking like one side of one block in certain areas. There's a small armada of bucket trucks working in Sec. 1 this morning. Hopefully they can wrap up over there and move over across Shepherd later today or tomorrow.

Enraging.

Still no power. Fortunately, some friends of ours a few minutes away in the Heights got power back Wednesday, so we've been able to stay in their upstairs guest room the last 2 nights. And my office has had power the whole time, so I pretty much camp out there all day. Running out of clean clothes though, and getting tired of showering and changing at the gym and hauling bags and coolers all over town. Wife finally was able to snag a hotel room for tonight and it worked out super convenient. I'm going to a suite at Astros game tonight with my firm and then I can just walk over to our room at the Marquis, so actually looking forward to having an enjoyable evening. Hoping to have power back Sunday or Monday. Think we're gonna book it out town for the rest of the weekend to head to my parents' where they've been keeping our dogs since Tuesday.

Oh joy, some afternoon thunderstorms. Just the thing to really help speed up restoration work.

CP needs to spend a lot more money on tree trimming in their easements and cease installing fragile wooden poles and only use sturdier composite ones going forward.

Another feather in the cap for CP"s customer outreach efforts. 8 am press release this morning said "CenterPoint Energy will begin providing estimated restoration times on its restoration status tracker before noon today." Welp, they finally updated the map at 12:45, and all they did was add a message to each neighborhood that says "we will continue to provide estimated restoration times once they become available." I clicked on probably 50 different neighborhoods and found only a single one that actually had an ETA.

Huzzah, 1.005M at 5 pm.

Noticed that Centerpoint has changed their outage counter to now just reflect "Customers restored since Beryl". Interestingly, it keep slowly ticking up straight towards their estimate of "1M restored by Wednesday Night." Currently at 985K restored. Will be a real coincidence when it tops 1M right in time for the 8 pm press release.

DJIA up 435 on the day. Approaching the warning track of 40K again. S&P breaches 5600. New ATH of 5633. Nasdaq breaches both 18500 and 18600. New ATH of 18647.

Somebody in the comments pointed out the brilliant PR work of publishing this video with 2 trucks slowly putting by a sea of idle vehicles.

I think it's actually pretty clear that CP needs to hire significantly more permanent office support and non-emergency personnel. They drastically need more customer/tech support and logistics people. I'm hearing all kinds of stories of people being unable to get through on the hotline to report downed lines. Then, when they do, the report doesn't get logged into the system. Neighbor said she reported a downed line 3 times now. On the 3rd call, they had no record of the previous 2 reports anywhere in their system. A buddy at work said he spent a chunk of his evening trying to report a dangerous tree branch with a power line wrapped around it leaning on his neighbor's fence and CP basically told him to call 311. 311 was like "WTF, downed power lines are absolutely an issue for CP! City ain't touching that shit!" It's like if you called 911 to report a building currently on fire and they told you to call the Fire Marshall instead to schedule an inspection the next day. All these line crews are in town and ready to roll, but reading that they end up spending a bunch of time staging and waiting for CP to actually give them marching orders, They also have to figure out a better system for giving people at least some idea of when restortation work will occur in their area. There's no heads up that a crew has been dispatched or any kind of ETA for anything. Pretty much the only way to find out if there is a crew in your neighborhood is to see someone post about it on social media. People literally have no idea if they'll be out for 1 day or 10, so it makes it real hard to determine whether you should pack your shit and leave for an extended trip or tough it out. Finally, they need dedicated crews that spend the entire year doing nothing but trimming limbs around lines and inspecting and flagging for replacement power poles that are likely to crap out in inclement weather.

Drew the real short end of the stick last night. Good chunk of my neighborhood got power around 8:00. Unfortunately a house behind me and a few over had a downed power line they'd reported that hadn't been fixed yet. Power came back on and fried the pole in their backyard, and apparently damn near electrocuted a kid in the yard south of them (2 down from my house). Long story short, south side of my street has power, north side of the street north of me has power. 22 houses in between, including me, are still boned. Centerpoint is aware of the problem and put in a work ticket last night, but god knows when they'll come back out since they've already re-powered our neighborhood's circuit. FML. "Slept" on a couch in my living room with a battery-powered fan keeping me at a temp just slightly below unlivable. 81 degrees downstairs, 85 upstairs. Hoping like hell a friend nearby or my brother gets power back today, or we can finally find a hotel. Can't do a 3rd straight restless night in a hot house.