'It's horrendous out there’: Austin power restoration time remains open-ended, utility says

More than 145,000 Austin Energy customers remained without power late Thursday, and city officials are now saying it is unclear when power will be restored.

Jackie Sargent, general manager for Austin Energy, the city's electrical utility, said the situation is challenging because of the complexity of the damage and the obstacles crews are facing.

However, Austin Water officials assured residents that water operations were healthy, and that no citywide boil-water notice was expected.

In the coming days, County Judge Andy Brown said Travis County and Austin leaders will look into making a disaster declaration in hopes of getting additional resources for cleanup efforts and recovery.

“We're looking at ways to help crews speed up the process, because as we get reports back from the roads and the streets of the county, it seems like the number of trees down and debris out there is just massive,” Brown said. “And so, we're looking at declaring a disaster ... and see if that will help us on the cleanup effort.”

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Where are we with recovery efforts?

Power restoration remains ongoing with numerous downed trees and snapped electrical lines reported across Austin and Travis County.

Thursday morning, Austin Energy officials said that they believed they could get all power restored by 6 p.m. Friday, but as crews have evaluated the outages, it is now clear that restoration will take longer than anticipated.

City Manager Spencer Cronk said the situation is fluid, and each incident is unique. But city crews and staff were working to address each issue as quickly as possible, he said.

“As city governments, we are sometimes faced with striking a balance between sharing our best estimates and timelines on objectives, and spending time to ensure our estimates are exact and precise,” he said. “But in the real world, as we've seen today, getting that balance right is not always easy. But please know that we do our best to provide those estimates of how things are going and we do it based on the best information at the time.”

What's holding up restoration?

Elton Richards, vice president of field operations for Austin Energy, said the problem is the ice and the weight of it. He said that even with managing tree growth around power lines, the weight of the ice has brought down large trees onto primary cables and poles.

He said the recovery could take a while as crews respond to each outage, adding that neighboring utilities from Houston, New Braunfels, San Antonio and Boerne have been deployed to help.

“It’s horrendous out there,” he said. “And I just really appreciate my guys. We're really working hard to get the service restored for customers.”

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Do we also need to be worried about water?

Newly appointed Austin Water Director Shay Roalson assured residents on Thursday that the water storage levels are healthy in the distribution system, and the city did not have the kind of significant disruptions that would trigger a citywide boil-water notice, as we had in the February 2021 freeze.

However, in two small pockets of the city, affecting about 40 customers, they were unable to maintain water storage levels, and staff is working to provide them water in the meantime. She said that once the water is restored there, a boil notice will be issued, but overall, Austin Water customers have been served as normal.

Are the pipes working?

Roalson said that Austin Water crews have been working since Tuesday morning to keep pump and lift stations operational. Pump stations are used to move water around and provide pressure to the system, she said.

Like many residents who have been dealing with power outages, Austin Water crews have been troubleshooting outages and working with Austin Energy to restore power as quickly as possible.

“So intermittent power outages are still happening around town and we continue to monitor our system closely,” Roalson said. “But we do not anticipate the need to issue any kind of citywide water outage or boil-water notice.”

But residents are encouraged to conserve water, by postponing running laundry or using dishwashers, in the short term, until power is fully restored. This places less burden on the system overall and will help them continue to provide water to everyone, she said.

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How is the city going to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

City officials have said they plan to evaluate their response to the storm once power is restored to customers. Cronk said that with every event response, city leaders look at how they can do things better in the future.

He said they took the lessons learned from the February 2021 freeze and previous boil-water notices, and applied them to this response, but more work will need to be done.

“Every response is unique,” Cronk said. “And this situation had its own unique set of challenges. We know that we'll be doing the same after-action reports, and ensuring that we're getting as much information as we can, and in the manner that our community can expect.”

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said that as early as next Tuesday, the City Council will begin to look at those processes, and evaluating the city’s response. Watson earlier Thursday said he had been disappointed that officials were not more aggressive in their public communication as downed trees, branches and limbs left tens of thousands shivering in dark and cold homes.

"We need to have questions answered, including how we communicate with the public, how we make sure the public knows what's going on, and how we prevent this sort of incident in the future,” Watson said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin Energy power restoration time remains open-ended, utility says