Texans Respond To Hurricane Power Outages By Assaulting Utility Staff Just Trying To Restore Their Power

Hurricane Beryl caused some significant power outages in Houston, and with temperatures within the 90s, it’s a dangerous, miserable situation throughout. It’s bad enough that many utility employees got here in from out of state to help with the attempts to revive power across town. As a substitute of being greeted by grateful residents expressing their appreciation, though, some utility employees have been threatened, assaulted and even shot at. Things got so bad that Texas Governor Greg Abbott was forced to deal with it, Click2Houston reports.

Up to now, at the least one person has been arrested for pulling a gun on a utility employee and pointing it at him. Essentially the most disturbing report we’ve heard up to now, though, comes from CenterPoint Energy, which said certainly one of its crews experienced a drive-by shooting at certainly one of its staging sites. In consequence, CenterPoint closed that site, slowing down its repair efforts.

“When you’re interfering with any person who’s attempting to get the ability back up, you’re not speeding up the strategy of getting the ability back on; you’re slowing that process down,” Abbott told Houston residents.

Several local leaders also held a press conference on Sunday, begging people to depart utility employees alone. Ed Allen, Business Manager for IBEW Local 66, said:

I’ve had several firms already tell me Ed, if it doesn’t stop, we’re going to get in our trucks and drive off. In 42 years on this industry, working here on this community, I actually have never seen a response like this from the community.

We’ve had guys who’ve had guns pulled on them, we’ve got guys who’ve had rocks picked up and slung at them. I had a crew out in Sugarland, they’d guys, with AK-47′s standing across from them. Never pointed it at them but menacing them.

We just are so a lot better than this.

Considering how dangerous it’s to go without power when it’s that hot outside and the way unreliable Texas’s electrical grid is, it’s comprehensible that residents could be incredibly frustrated. At the identical time, the employees aren’t those making those decisions. It’s the politicians and power executives who should be held accountable, not the people actually doing the work to get the ability back on. And that’s very true of employees who traveled in from out of state to assist out.