Over a million Texans without power, some turn to Whataburger for updates

More than 1.3 million homes remained without power in Texas on Thursday, July 11, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl’s landfall on Monday. Houston’s power utility officials said that hundreds of thousands of customers will have electricity restored in the coming days. However, officials said that around 500,000 customers will still be without power heading into next week.

“We’ve committed within 48 hours to get 50% of our customers back on.” Brad Tutunjian, the vice president of Regional Operations for CenterPoint Energy, said. “We, we are on target to do that.”

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The lagging timetable is causing frustration among many Houston residents as they face dangerous heat and humidity. Many Houstonians search for places to cool off, get fuel or grab a bite to eat. Hospitals have been forced to reportedly send dozens of patients to a sports and event complex because of the electrical outages.

The continued struggle to restore power to customers in need is leading to questions from locals as to why utility, state and city officials were not more prepared for a Category 1 hurricane.

Houston’s mayor told the city’s utility company, CenterPoint Energy, to do better. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is the acting governor while Gov. Greg Abbott, R, is on a trip to Asia, said that the time it has taken to restore power is “unacceptable.”

Adding to the trouble for residents is the fact that CenterPoint reportedly does not have a properly functioning outage map. As many residents searched for updates after the storm, the lack of information from CenterPoint had many turning to Whataburger’s app for power outage updates.

“The Whataburger app works as a power outage tracker, handy since the electric company doesn’t show a map,” one Houstonian posted on X.

Similar to the Waffle House Index, an unofficial outage indicator, the Whataburger app shows which locations are open the area. Houston residents said that the when the app shows that a location is open, it has been pretty safe to assume that power in the area has been or is being restored in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, CenterPoint said that the majority of power outages were caused by falling trees and tree limbs. Workers completed damage surveys on more than 8,500 miles of power lines.

At least eight U.S. deaths have been attributed to Beryl, including six in Texas and one each in Louisiana and Vermont. Beryl also caused 11 deaths in the Caribbean.