Nearly every resident in Galveston lacks electricity and roughly half the island has been without heat for more than 16 hours during the region’s worst cold snap in a century, forcing the city to open a warming center Monday night at the McGuire-Dent Recreation Center, city officials said.
City Manager Brian Maxwell said he hopes the facility will at least give residents a chance to charge their phones and stop shivering for a few minutes.
Parks Director Cesar Garcia urged residents to call 409-797-3700 before coming to ensure the building, between 27th and 28th street at the Seawall, isn’t over capacity, to bring a face mask and snacks with them, and to prepare to pass a rapid COVID-19 test on site before being admitted.
Ordered by the overwhelmed Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the state’s electric grid, to sharply reduce power usage across the state, the region’s utility provider, CenterPoint Energy, shut off power to half of Galveston households around 1:30 a.m. Monday.
The blackouts were expected to rotate to different areas and last no more than an hour at a time, but the weather forced power plants offline at the same time as demand was spiking. So not only was power not restored to those Galveston residents and millions of other Texans, but almost every other home on the island lost power at 8 a.m., city officials said.
Several hundred more homes lost power shortly before 4 p.m., Maxwell said.
“It’s frustrating to us,” Maxwell said. “We’re 90 to 95 percent out and they’re not rotating. It’s just off. It’s been off since 2 a.m.”
The few residents still with heat were those on the same circuit as the University of Texas Medical Branch and a few homes at the far west end of the seawall, Maxwell said.
Mayor Craig Brown has declared a local emergency state of disaster and sought state assistance.
School teacher Rea Sader woke up to the beeping of her Galveston apartment building’s emergency system when the power went out about 2 a.m.
By 6 a.m. the beeping was so faint it seemed the batteries were dying. By 4 p.m., the sound was long gone, replaced by a silent vigil waiting for power to return as the temperature continued to drop. With electric appliances, her breakfast and lunch had been chips and peanut butter sandwiches.
“If we had a time frame it would be easier, even just mentally, to prepare. That’s the most worrying part,” she said. “They say it’s ‘rolling’ out, but then other parts not too far away seem to have electricity, so it’s like there’s definitely some misinformation or lack of communication going on. Is it really ‘rolling’ out or is it something else?”
Still, Sader, who moved to the island about two years ago, felt lucky to be in an insulated building, as friends struggled with 40 degrees temperatures in their homes. A Canadian by birth, she considered venturing out to enjoy the snowfall, but then decided to preserve as much heat indoors as she could.
“Our homes are not built for this,” Maxwell said. “They’re very old homes in most cases, they’re difficult to heat normally, and with no heat going at all it’s going to be very, very hard for people to stay warm in these homes tonight.”
Maxwell also was concerned about the volume of pipes that would burst overnight, as temperatures were projected to drop even lower. He urged residents whose homes are vacant to call 409-797-3971 so city utility workers can shut off their water at the street, lowering the risk of burst pipes, or at least of water damage after a rupture.
“It’s going to be pretty brutal,” he said. “When we get above freezing we’ll most likely go into conservation mode on water until we can get a hold on all the leaks.”
— Nick Powell contributed reporting
mike.morris@chron.com
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