To All Cuffers in the South

[Uncle Ted]

I think you are probably correct that Houston has the most potential to be a disaster waiting to happen. New Orleans would have been first but Katrina already happened and they rebuilt most of the infrastructure to withstand major hurricanes and they are more aware/afraid of hurricanes. New Orleans is also small compared to Houston. There are over 7 million people in the Houston area compared to just over 1 million in New Orleans.

The problem with Houston is it's prone to hurricanes and flooding (like serious flooding that sticks around for a while since it's flat), so you can't just bury all the power lines because floods can wreak havoc on buried lines. You also can't have them all in the air because of the threat of hurricanes. So we go with a hybrid option where some are buried and some are overhead and we just grin and bear it when hurricanes come through. It also costs 4 times as much to bury a power line than to put it overhead and most people would prefer to be without power for 4-7 days a couple times a decade if it means their power bill is a lot less.

If a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane hits Houston, it could get really, really ugly. Ike was a Cat 2/3 when it hit Houston and it took over two weeks for most people to get power and our infrastucture is no better today than it was in 2008. You'd also have a huge humanitarian crisis with a major hurricane given that over 7 million people could be without power and Houston has a lot of lower socio-economic neighborhoods. People in my middle class neighborhood already starting to lose patience with the situation but most of them have the means to leave town and stay in Austin or San Antonio.

The utility has already issued a statement saying that the biggest problem this time around is the extensive tree damage. They are blaming that damage on the three previous years of unusual weather but in reality they were just being cheap and not doing the minimum in pruning and preventive maintenance around the infrastructure. There are streets near me with dozens of branches sitting on power lines, which would not be the case if the trees were adequately maintained....which is the utilities responsibility.

Anyway, we are on day 4 without power but are spending the nights at a friends house that has power. MJ and the kids are headed to Austin this weekend for a pre-planned trip and I think they are really looking forward to getting out of town. The utility is saying that most customers should have power back on by Sunday night. By that time, the money I spent on gas for the generator will be most expensive than the food we are trying to keep cold/frozen...but whatever, MJ would rather spend more money to keep the food than to throw it all out and replace it once power comes back on.

I have been watching the CenterPoint outage map for Houston and north Houston looks like it is a mess... lots of folks without power. There is also a big Lumen/Level 3 data center somewhere in Greenspoint area near the IHC airport that most of the internet for east Texas goes through for some reason that is without power. Apparently their backup generation is way undersized so folks using Spectrum/CenturyLink/BightSpeed/etc (less profitable connections) are without internet (given they shut off a lot of equipment in the data center to reduce the generator load). StarLink has been getting a lot of new customers recently. 1st world problems.

Stay cool, Molie.