31 states send crews to get power back on in Houston area

NY Times:

An army of line crews from 31 states has converged on eastern Texas to help deal with the largest power failure in this large state’s history.

In the wake of Hurricane Ike, officials fear it could take weeks to restore power in some places, like Galveston and the towns near the Louisiana border, because major transmission lines have been knocked out, substations have been swamped and trees have fallen on neighborhood lines.

“It’s a rare event when you will see physical damage to most of the grid,” said Mayor Bill White of Houston. “Hurricane Ike, with our power company, was that kind of event.”

About two million customers remained without power across eastern Texas as of Tuesday afternoon, three days after the hurricane hit.

Hundreds of thousands of students were still out of school, mail delivery was suspended, most businesses had yet to open, hundreds of intersections lacked traffic signals and government agencies were struggling to provide services. Some hospitals, including the main hospital in Galveston, operated on generators.

Entergy, the utility that serves the area east of Houston, has restored power to about 40,000 of its 395,000 customers. CenterPoint, which serves Houston and Galveston, had made more progress, but still had 1.5 million customers in the dark.

In Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city and the center of its oil industry, signs of prolonged blackout are everywhere — in long lines at the few gasoline stations with power to run pumps, in the huge demand for ice at government food-distribution centers, in the low number of grocery stores that are open, and in the grumbling of ordinary citizens. Refineries in Texas remain closed.

Most of Houston was coping without refrigerators, air-conditioners and pumps to provide water pressure both for drinking water and for sewage plants.

“I got no ice, no water, no electricity, no nothing,” said Maria Phillips, 25, of the Houston suburb of Baytown, echoing the comments of many others. Ms. Phillips’s house, which had been flooded, was nearly uninhabitable, she said.

President Bush, who visited Houston and Galveston on Tuesday, discussed the blackout with local officials.

“Obviously people are concerned about electricity,” Mr. Bush said, “and what I look for, is there enough help to get these energy companies to do what they instinctively want to do, which is get the grid up and running?”

Throughout the day, tree-trimming crews and line workers were arriving from states as far away as California and Pennsylvania to help the local utilities, which had already deployed about 8,500 workers.

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You don't hear a lot of whining from the victims of this storm. They just roll their sleeves up and get after the problem and they are grateful for the help they do get from others. Here is a group of pictures of the storm damage. I have a question about the beach front houses destroyed by fire before the storm hit. Will Insurance cover the fire?

Several of the Houston Texan football players had extensive damage to their homes in a ritzy neighborhood in Sugarland. Travis Johnson had the roof blown off his house and the water collapsed the ceiling as he and his family took shelter in a closet.

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