Utility companies are working to restore electricity, which could mean weeks for some areas still flooded with waters and smothered with debris from Hurricane Ike.

By Eileen Schwartz

Power companies are working around the clock to restore electricity in areas affected by Hurricane Ike, but officials in Texas advise evacuees that “it is not time to go home.”

Ike’s affects were felt from the Gulf Coast, where the storm’s eye made landfall near Galveston Island, to the Midwest, where flooding and wind from the storm were blamed for blackouts from Indiana to Ohio and Kentucky to Arkansas.

Photo Credit: CenterPoint Energy

Nearly 2 million homes and businesses in Ohio serviced by Duke Energy were without power. "This is the worst our company has ever experienced in Ohio and Kentucky in terms of number of customers affected," says Sandra Meyer, president, Duke Energy Ohio and Kentucky.

In Texas, power has been restored to some 700,000 customers. Approximately 2.2 million customers remain without power.

“All of Entergy’s Texas customers were without power at one time,” says Terry Hadley, PUC, spokesperson for the Texas Public Utility Commission.

Entergy serves some 2.7 million utility customers in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

David Caplan, spokesperson for Entergy at its Texas headquarters in Beaumont, confirms damage to 152 transmission lines and 209 substations in Texas. “That’s a big challenge to get the transmission system restored,” he says. “And it’s what is required before residential, business and industrial costumers can really expect to get back on.”

Crews with the Texas Department of Transportation, working on Sept. 13, to clear Southbound main lanes of IH-45 just north of the Galveston Causeway. (Photo by Bryan Ellis, TxDOT)

One of Entergy’s biggest Texas plants, the 1,800 MW Sabine Plant in Bridge City, is out of service. “It took 4 ft of water [from the surge]. It’s going to take weeks to get it back online,” Caplan says.

“This is big infrastructure that’s down,” he says. “It’s timely and very costly to repair.” He adds that the affected area, known as the Piney Woods, makes it particularly difficult because of the trees and vegetation, as well as tornadic forces. “It creates havoc with our infrastructure and equipment.”

Caplan says the company can  work around the absence of Sabine for a while once transmission is restored. “We have adequate support from off-Entergy power companies,” he says. “But the sooner we get it back in the better, obviously.”

Additional crews are either in place or on the way. “We’re reaching out far and wide,” Caplan says. He adds that huge staging sites, each housing about 1,000 workers,  are “all over the place.”

“It’s going to be an enormous undertaking. I don’t care whether we’re talking about Entergy’s efforts or CenterPoint. People just don’t realize what it’s going to take to stitch the system back together and get people back on.”

Blanca Valasquez, a spokesperson for CenterPoint Energy of Houston, says that more than half a million customers in Greater Houston have regained power. The company announced on Sept. 15 that it had restored power to 723,000 customers. That still leaves nearly 1.5 of CenterPoint Energy 2.26 million Texas customers without power.

“We had mutual assistance crews come in to restore power,” Valasquez says. Many of CenterPoint’s crews had just returned from Louisiana were they were helping with Gustav, she adds. The company estimated that 8,000 lineman and tree trimmers would be on the scene by Wednesday. 

EPA Grants Fuel Waiver; Evacuees Urged to Stay Put

In order to provide adequate diesel fuel supply for generators, heavy equipment and other diesel-run vehicles needed for Hurricane Ike recovery, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was granted a waiver from Texas Low Emission Diesel standards by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state officials announced on Sept. 15.

Crews from TxDOT’s Beaumont District discovered a barge washed up from on State Highway 73 near Bridge City.

While most of the state’s highway system in the TxDOT’s Houston District is cleared of debris and flood waters, authorities are strongly discouraging travel to the Houston and Beaumont areas.

“The decisions [made by local officials] to allow re-entry will not be made based on the passability [sic] of roads and bridges,” says TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott. “There are still issues with power, water and other safety concerns.”

Lippincott says the concentration of roads that have still not been evaluated are in TxDOTs’ Beaumont district.

In Beaumont, the district is working to clear debris and assess damage. “We’ll know [more] later on,” says Marc Shepherd, district spokesperson. “But we’re going to be doing a lot of repairing.”

TxDOT’s Beaumont district includes more than 5,500 lane mi of highway stretching throughout nine counties in Texas’ Piney Woods area, including Jefferson and Orange, among the areas hardest hit by Ike. “We were on the northeast side of the storm and took the brunt of it,” Shepherd says. “Entire cities are underwater.”

State Highway 73 to Bridge City is underwater and “impassable,” says Shepherd. As crews began clearing debris along the highway, they found a barge washed up from the Intracoastal Waterway, which is several miles from the highway.

“When you look at Houston proper versus the Beaumont District, I’d say we’re in worse shape,” Shepherd says. “In Houston right now, the challenge is power. It has some  flooded frontage roads. We have a lot of highways that are still underwater.”

Galveston Causeway Cleared, Seawall Sound, But Island Remains Closed

While Galveston remains without any services and is closed to all but emergency officials, the mainlaines of the Galveston Causeway have been cleared of debris, and so far there are no reports of structural damage, says TxDOT spokesman Chris Lippincott. “We’ve done an inspection of the bridge, it is structurally sound and safe,” he says.

The causeway is being used by emergency officials, Lippincott says.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contractor, Ceres Environmental, in coordination with the Texas Department of Transportation, begins its first FEMA-directed debris removal mission along 61st Street in Galveston.  (Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; photo by Shane Braley)

The Galveston District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closed its operations when the city was evacuated, relocating critical assets and personnel to an emergency operations center at Addick Field Office on the west side of Houston. During the storm, the Corps monitored hurricane protection structures at Freeport, Texas City and Port Arthur. No major damage has been reported to any of flood control structures, says Penny Schmitt, a Corps public affairs spokesperson. Schmitt is chief of public affairs for the Wilmington District in North Carolina, but is assisting with Hurricane Ike response.

She says that Galveston Corps staff is still “reconstituting,” as many were displaced by the storm.

“Folks who are back on the job are just beginning to get out to look at all our facilities,” she says. “Hydrographic survey of navigation channels, now under way, is a high priority.”

Schmitt says that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not seen any major damage to the west end of the Galveston Seawall.

Early damage reports indicate destruction of several buildings lining the Seawall, but there appears to be little damage to the structure itself, built by the Corps in cooperation with the city of Galveston in 1902.

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