Company urges its nearly 400,000 natural gas
customers in Louisiana and
Mississippi to take additional
safety measures; electric preparedness and response work in the
Greater Houston area transitions
back to normal operations
- Emergency Operations Centers remain activated in response to
the potential impacts of Hurricane Francine on gas customers in
Louisiana and Mississippi.
- CenterPoint Energy Texas-based natural gas personnel are
ready to be deployed to Louisiana
and Mississippi to support any
natural gas restoration work.
- CenterPoint has released all 1,500 additional distribution
frontline, mutual aid workers in the Greater Houston area and made them available
to other utilities in areas of the Gulf Coast more likely to be
impacted.
- More than 1,300 vegetation management crews will continue to
trim and remove high-risk vegetation in the Greater Houston area today, of which, the 700
additional mutual assistance vegetation management personnel will
be released tomorrow to support the needs of other
utilities.
HOUSTON, Sept. 11,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- With Hurricane Francine's
expected landfall today, CenterPoint Energy continues to actively
monitor and focus its response efforts on nearly 400,000 natural
gas customers that could be impacted across Louisiana and Mississippi. The company is coordinating
closely with emergency agency partners and has mobilized natural
gas personnel, resources and support as part of its overall
response efforts. Given the current state of the storm tracking
away from the Greater Houston
area, the company has made 1,500 distribution frontline, mutual aid
workers, available to other utilities in areas more likely to be
impacted.
"We remain vigilant as Hurricane Francine draws closer, and our
focus is on supporting all of our nearly 400,000 natural gas
customers in Mississippi and
Louisiana. We continue to urge our
customers in the path of the storm to take the necessary safety and
preparation steps to keep themselves and their loved ones safe,"
said Bo Murphy, CenterPoint's Vice
President of Louisiana and
Mississippi Natural Gas.
"As the storm has tracked away from Greater Houston, we have transitioned our
electric work in Greater Houston
back to normal operations. We're staying in close contact with our
utility peers in Louisiana and
Mississippi and will make our
frontline distribution workers available for mutual assistance
based on their needs," said Darin
Carroll, Senior Vice President of Electric Business.
Preparedness Actions in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas
The steps the company is taking
to prepare and respond to Hurricane Francine include:
- Readying Texas-based
natural gas personnel to support colleagues in LA and MS:
Secured Texas-based natural gas
personnel to be deployed to support the company's nearly 480-member
natural gas workforce in Louisiana
and its nearly 200-member workforce in Mississippi and any necessary storm-related
natural gas work in those states.
- Released all 1,500 frontline mutual aid workers: Made
available all additional distribution frontline, mutual aid workers
secured for the Greater Houston
area to other more-impacted utilities to the east.
- Finishing storm-related vegetation management work in
Greater Houston area: 1,300
vegetation management personnel will continue their work today,
focusing on executing high-risk vegetation work with the intention
to release the 700 mutual aid vegetation management personnel
tomorrow based on the needs of other utilities in the path of the
storm.
- Coordinating with government officials: Providing
regular updates to federal, state, county and city officials to
communicate company's pre-storm activities and readiness posture
and provide critical updates.
- Conducting outreach to Critical Care Residential and Chronic
Care customers: Conducted outreach to all 3,000+ identified
Critical Care Residential and Chronic Care electric customers by
email, phone or text.
- Sharing customer communications: Shared safety and
preparedness actions with CenterPoint customers across social media
and other platforms to help keep customers informed and
prepared.
- Organizing additional call center staffing: Secured
additional call center staff to handle a higher volume of calls
during the storm and limit wait times.
- Preparing to conduct patrols and assess damage:
CenterPoint crews will be deployed across its service territory to
assess damage and, in the case of natural gas customers, shut-off
natural gas in areas of severe flooding for safety.
Responding to Potential Impacts Across Service
Territory
The company is continuing to carefully monitor
Hurricane Francine and taking immediate preparedness actions to
support its natural gas customers in impacted states, including
nearly 250,000 customers in Louisiana and more than 135,000 in
Mississippi.
Safety Tips for Natural Gas Customers
CenterPoint is
reminding customers to stay safe prior to, during and after
Tropical Storm Francine by following these natural gas safety
tips:
- Do not turn off your natural gas service at the meter in
advance of the storm; doing so could allow water to enter the
natural gas lines should flooding occur. If you wish to discontinue
gas service, turn off the natural gas at each appliance.
- Always be alert for the smell of natural gas. If you smell
natural gas, leave the area immediately on foot and tell others to
leave, too.
- If you smell natural gas, do not turn the lights on or off,
smoke, strike a match, use a cell phone or operate anything that
might cause a spark, including a flashlight or a generator.
- Do not attempt to turn natural gas valves on or off. Once
safely away from the area, call 1-888-876-5786 and CenterPoint will
send a trained service technician.
- If your home is flooded, call a licensed plumber or natural gas
appliance technician to inspect your appliances and gas piping to
make sure they are in good operating condition before calling
CenterPoint to reconnect service. This includes outdoor natural gas
appliances including pool heaters, gas grills and gas lights.
- If you are planning any digging or clearing as part of your
pre- or post-hurricane activities, please call 811, the nationwide
Call Before You Dig number, to locate underground natural gas lines
and other underground utility lines.
- Be aware of where your natural gas meter is located. As debris
is put out for heavy trash pickup, make sure it is placed away from
the meter. In many areas the meter may be located near the curb. If
debris is near a natural gas meter, the mechanized equipment used
by trash collectors could pull up the meter, damaging it and
causing a potentially hazardous situation. If this happens, leave
the area immediately and call CenterPoint at 1-888-876-5786.
CenterPoint Encourages All Customers to Have a Plan to Stay
Safe
CenterPoint is encouraging all of its customers to
prepare and have a plan to stay safe during Hurricane Francine.
Customers can get storm-related electric, natural gas and flooding
safety tips at CenterPointEnergy.com/StormCenter. Additional
preparations best practices are available at Ready.gov.
Important Information for Electric Customers
While the
Greater Houston area is not
expected to be impacted by Hurricane Francine, storms are
unpredictable, conditions can change rapidly and storm-related
outages could occur. CenterPoint electric customers are encouraged
to enroll in the company's Power Alert Service® to receive outage
details, estimated restoration times and customer-specific
restoration updates via phone call, text or email. Customers can
also stay up-to-date on outages with CenterPoint's new and
improved, cloud-based Outage Tracker, which allows customers to see
outages by county, city and zip code. The new tracker is capable of
handling increased traffic during storms and is ADA- and mobile-friendly.
For the latest updates, follow CenterPoint
on X (formerly Twitter) for real-time updates. For more
information and other resources, visit
CenterPointEnergy.com/NaturalGasSafety.
About CenterPoint Energy, Inc.
As the only
investor-owned electric and gas utility based in Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) is
an energy delivery company with electric transmission and
distribution, power generation and natural gas distribution
operations that serve more than 7 million metered customers in
Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. With approximately 9,000 employees,
CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in
business for more than 150 years. For more information, visit
CenterPointEnergy.com.
For more information, contact:
Communications
Media.Relations@CenterPointEnergy.com
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SOURCE CenterPoint Energy