More than 250 residents at a southwest Houston townhome complex spent part of Labor Day weekend without power after a series of electrical problems left them without air conditioning and concerned about spoiled food and refrigerated medication.<\/p>\n
Residents at Westbury Square Townhomes, located off Chimney Rock Road, said the latest outage began Saturday morning after two fuses went out.<\/p>\n
For some, it was the latest in a series of power problems stretching back several weeks.<\/p>\n
Angela Furnari said residents first lost power for about 30 hours roughly two weeks ago. Then, on Friday morning, another fuse blew. Power was restored that evening, but two more fuses went out Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
“This is also the second or third time we’ve had to dump our refrigerators too,” Furnari said.<\/p>\n
Some residents booked hotel rooms during the outage, while others relied on neighbors with generators to keep their medication refrigerated.<\/p>\n
Kathy Metcalf said the heat inside her townhome became unbearable. Her thermostat read 80 degrees, but she said it felt much hotter.<\/p>\n
“It might say 80, but I’m telling you, it feels like 100,” Metcalf said.<\/p>\n
Victoria Kaufman, president of the townhome board, said two replacement parts were needed to complete the repairs, but they did not arrive until Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
Once the parts arrived, Kaufman said a licensed electrician completed the repairs to the property’s equipment. The remaining step was getting CenterPoint Energy to restore power.<\/p>\n
Kaufman said residents grew frustrated as they tried to determine when that would happen.<\/p>\n
“CenterPoint was like giving us the runaround. We talked to several different people,” Kaufman said.<\/p>\n
KHOU 11 reached out to CenterPoint on behalf of the residents.<\/p>\n
The utility said the outage involved outdated equipment owned by the property. Before CenterPoint could restore power, the repairs to the customer-owned equipment had to be inspected by the city.<\/p>\n
Once the inspection was complete, CenterPoint restored power.<\/p>\n
In a statement, CenterPoint said its teams had been working with the property owners to resolve the issue and remained in regular contact while a licensed electrician made repairs.<\/p>\n
By Sunday night, residents who had spent days dealing with the heat and repeated outages were finally able to turn their lights and air conditioning back on.<\/p>\n
They said they hope the repairs prevent another extended outage.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re just all hot and stressed and not wanting to have emergency issues when we all pay our electricity on time,” Furnari said.<\/p>\n
Read the full statement from CenterPoint below:<\/p>\n
CenterPoint Energy is committed to delivering the reliable and safe energy our Greater Houston area customers expect and deserve. \u202f<\/p>\n
The outage in question impacting customers living in townhomes at 11530 Chimney Rock was related to a customer-owned equipment issue, and not CenterPoint\u202fequipment. Based on repairs made today by the property owner and the City of Houston conducting the required inspections, CenterPoint was able to restore power this evening at approximately 7:30 PM.<\/p>\n
Since yesterday, our team has continued to work collaboratively with the homeowners’ association leadership as they worked to address the situation. A recent outage affecting the\u202fWestbury Square Townhomes was caused by damage to customer-owned equipment on the property.\u202fYesterday, CenterPoint crews\u202fpromptly\u202fresponded to the location and inspected its infrastructure and\u202fconfirmed there were no issues with\u202fthe company’s equipment serving the complex.<\/p>\n
Since that time, our teams have been working closely with the property owners to support resolution of the issue. We remained\u202fin regular contact with the property owner while the necessary repairs were made to the customer\u2011owned equipment by a licensed electrician.\u202f<\/p>\n
We recognize the hardship outages\u202fcan create\u202ffor residents, and we\u202fremain\u202fcommitted to working alongside the property owner if issues arise in the future.<\/p>\n