Texas Senate chamber at the Texas Capitol building, January 2021.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has formed a committee to ensure utility companies "respond more effectively to future storms."
Patrick announced in a statement Wednesday the creation of the Senate Special Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness, Recovery, and Electricity. He named Texas Sen. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown Dist. 5) chairman and Texas Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford Dist. 10) vice chair.
The committee's creation comes as CenterPoint Energy in Houston struggled for more than a week to restore electricity to millions of customers along the Texas Gulf Coast after Hurricane Beryl brought down power lines and knocked out power to about 2.7 million homes and businesses. Most outages were concentrated in the Houston area, where CenterPoint reported Monday that it had restored power to more than 2 million customers. Still, more than 200,000 remained without power on Tuesday.
CenterPoint said Wednesday that crews had restored power to more than 98% of impacted customers, ahead of prior expectations. The company remains on track to restore electricity to all customers who can receive power by Friday, July 19.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
Schwertner said the committee will focus on why utility companies "failed to provide timely power restoration to millions of Texans and the decisive actions these companies will take to ensure this type of catastrophic failure never happens again.”
“Texans are rightfully upset with the overwhelming failure of electric utility companies to restore power in a timely fashion following Hurricane Beryl. The electric utility companies’ failure cannot be tolerated, especially when it was so obvious a storm was headed toward Texas," Patrick said. "I am appointing this committee to review what happened and establish why certain electric utility companies appear to have been woefully unprepared for Hurricane Beryl. The Texas Senate will work to ensure electric utility companies respond more effectively to future storms.”
In addition to Schwertner and King, the following Texas senators were named to the bi-partisan committee.
Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston Dist. 6)
Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston Dist. 7)
Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe Dist. 4)
Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen Dist. 20)
Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston Dist. 17)
Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham Dist. 18)
Sen. Morgan LaMantia (D-Palm Valley Dist. 27)
Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston Dist. 11)
Sen. Borris Miles (D-Houston Dist. 13)
Sen. Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville Dist. 3)
Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo Dist. 21)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to punish CenterPoint Energy even after the lights returned. The Texas Public Utility Commission, the state's regulatory agency, announced Monday it had launched an investigation Abbott demanded into CenterPoint's storm preparation and response.
