The power is still out for nearly a million people in Houston today, five (5) days after Hurricane Beryl slammed into the city in the wee hours of Monday morning, initially knocking out electricity to 2.2 million residents. CenterPoint Energy, the privately owned utility that serves Houston, managed to restore power overnight to another 150,000 customers, finally getting the number of those with no service below a million, and the company says it hopes to restore power to another 400,000 by the end of Friday.
Not everything is ducky, however, as the Houston Chronicle reports. While some folks on social media were posting videos of themselves turning on lights and AC after several days, that was
cold comfort for hundreds of thousands across the city still waiting their turn, and even more frustrating for those listed as "fully energized" on CenterPoint's new outage map who don't actually have power. Many say they have no way of communicating their statuses or concerns to the utility company as its call center continues to be flooded by people seeking help, updates and answers.
Cold comfort? More like hot and humid comfort!
The story also notes that on Wednesday, CenterPoint only managed to reconnect “fewer than 100,000 people” during daylight hours, and that the company says as many as half a million customers may not get any electricity until after the weekend. The National Weather Service has a heat advisory in effect for Houston, warning that the continued power outages and lack of air conditioning “will aggravate the risk for heat-related illnesses” due to temperatures in the low 90s Fahrenheit, with the heat index reaching as high as 103 degrees.
Gov. Greg Abbott is still out of the country; he left for a trade junket through Asia last Friday, after Beryl made landfall in Mexico and had already been forecast to turn north towards Texas. But before he skedaddled, Abbott promised that the state was ready for whatever came, and that in his absence, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick would do just fine.
After Beryl hit, however, President Joe Biden had a heck of a time tracking down Patrick to get him to ask for a major disaster declaration, which is required before the federal government can release aid. Biden finally reached the acting governor Tuesday afternoon, and then Patrick lied about why he hadn’t contacted Biden immediately, claiming that “before you can ask for a declaration you have to go meet with people in the impacted areas to see what’s needed and the level of need,” which a former top FEMA official told the Houston Chronicle was hooey. (Everybody has heard state officials over the years request declarations of emergency even before hurricanes have made landfall; this is not some arcane knowledge. Hell, George W. Bush did it at Lousiana Gov. Mary Landrieu’s request before Katrina ever hit. Actually getting FEMA to the table was … a problem.)
Thank goodness acting goober Patrick had the chance to assuage Houston residents’ worries in a news conference Thursday, which Patrick used to blame Joe Biden and the Democratic head of Harris County, Judge Lina Hidalgo, for the slow emergency response.
"The President is either totally incompetent or has no idea what he's doing and doesn't remember what he said. Or he's just lied to me and to Texas," Patrick said in a lengthy and intense press conference on Thursday. "You have to follow the law and do the assessments first. FEMA doesn't just hand out money unless there's some proof of need, so we did what we're supposed to do."
Once again, we’ll just point out that actual former FEMA director of public affairs Rafael Lemaitre told the Houston Chronicle (gift link) Tuesday that
major disaster declarations do not need to wait for thorough on-the-ground assessment. Governors are the lead requesters for the designation and support, but can amend their asks as they get more information.
“The fact that 80% of Texas’ largest city was in the dark, along with widespread public reports of impacts to life and property is more than sufficient to begin the process,” Lemaitre said. “The one thing you never get back during a response is time.”
Then again, is “Rafael Lemaitre” a real American name, even? In any case, Patrick continued to blame Biden in Thursday’s presser, because why didn’t Biden just call Abbott, who was in Korea, if he was so all-fired insistent on helping Texas?
"The President has [Abbott's] cell number; he has called the President before," Patrick added. "What's he mean he can't find the governor? What does he mean he can't find me? I was with his FEMA officials Friday, Sunday, and Monday for 12-15 hours a day. He wasn't trying to find us. He is trying to create a story."
One might ask why Abbott, the actual governor, who has dealt with federal disaster declarations several times, didn’t call Biden, since Abbott knows how that works. But asking that would make one a communist.
Patrick went on to insist that Biden was just angry about his own political situation and trying to distract people from that, or maybe he’s senile, probably both!!
"He's politicized the operation of FEMA with the State of Texas, either because he's trying to hide and stay on the ballot, because Democrats are trying to take him off, or he doesn't know what he's doing or doesn't remember what he said," Patrick said.
Heckuva job, brown-noser.
While he was at it, Patrick also slammed Hidalgo, claiming that he had tried repeatedly to contact her before Beryl came ashore, and that the last message he had from her before the hurricane hit was “we’re good.”
“We have not had one request from the county judge of Harris County, so I guess all her citizens are fine,” Patrick said, and as far as we can tell no reporters asked if he had heard from Harris County since the storm. You know, seeing as how he was too busy surveying the damage to call the White House and initiate a federal disaster declaration.
Nim Kidd, the head of Texas’s Division of Emergency Management, also performatively attacked Biden, because damn that man is why, he’s a demon:
"There are Texans right now that still don't have power, and it embarrasses me and saddens me to the point that this president has weaponized the federal government to enrage our citizens here to think I am not doing my job and that our governor is not doing his job," Kidd said.
So there’s your update on Houston’s hurricane recovery: The state would sure like to do more, but Joe Biden is senile and a liar who’s weaponized the federal government to make Texas’s leaders look bad, so what can they do?
It’s a remarkable display of competence from the same people who blamed the “Green New Deal” for Texas’s blackouts during the deadly winter storm of April 2021, although of course that was only a proposal that was never actually passed into law. (The closest thing to it, Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, passed over a year later, in August 2022.)
[Chron.com / Houston Chronicle (gift link)]
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Yep, I'm still here myself on Day 5 without power. It has sucked, to say the least.
Good Lord. Sarah Huckabee declared a state of emergency for an impending solar eclipse.