Tropical Storm Beryl updates: State officials confirm third death from the storm

Hurricane Beryl has knocked out power for more than 2.7 million Texas customers, as of 12:59 p.m. Monday, based on estimates from PowerOutage.us and CenterPoint Energy.

CenterPoint announced at 3:30 p.m. that its crews were beginning the process of restoring power to the 2.26 million Texas customers who lacked electricity. CenterPoint has not yet provided an estimate of when millions of its customers will regain electricity.

“We are mobilizing all of our available resources, as well as mutual assistance resources from other utility companies, to begin the process of quickly and safely restoring power to our customers,” Lynnae Wilson, senior vice president of Electric Business at CenterPoint. “We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat. We are laser focused on the important and time-sensitive work that lies ahead.”

CenterPoint will begin publishing estimates for substantial power restorations after assessing the damage.

Outages are most extensive in the Houston area and coastal counties including Matagorda, where Beryl landed as a Category 1 hurricane at approximately 4 a.m., Monday. Significant outages are also in Galveston County, Calhoun County and Jackson County. As the morning progressed, outages extended further inland and into Deep East Texas to areas including Polk, San Jacinto, Montgomery, Grimes and Washington Counties.

Most of the outages are among customers who receive power from CenterPointEnergy. CenterPoint is the main electricity provider for the vast majority of residents in Harris and Fort Bend counties and also provides electricity to dozens of East Texas communities. The provider is not currently providing county-specific numbers on outages.

CenterPoint warned people to stay away from downed wires and to not attempt to remove tree limbs or objects from power lines. Customers are instead advised to report outages and hazardous conditions to their power company or local authorities.

As of noon, about 25,000 AEP Texas customers remained without electricity. Most of those outages were in the upper Corpus Christi area –– a loop starting from Port Lavaca to Bay City to El Campo and to Victoria. AEP crews began restoring power to some of their customers Monday and expect to have more restoration information in the next 24 hours.

For the more than 25,000 customers of Oncor Electric Delivery who were affected by the outages, power restoration will likely happen on a case by case basis, according to Kaiti Blake, a spokesperson for Oncor.

— Pooja Salhotra and Berenice Garcia