Tens of thousands of Texans have had their power restored after an icy winter storm swept through much of the state this week, but more than 240,000 homes and businesses were still without electricity Friday morning.
Travis County, where state capital Austin is located, remained the epicenter of the outages Friday morning, where nearly 120,000 customers were without power. Energy officials said it was unclear when power would be restored in Austin, the American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported Thursday night.
More than 36,000 outages were reported Friday morning in Williamson County, just north of Austin.
In Smith County, home of Tyler, about 15,000 customers were without power, and in Bell County, located between Austin and Waco, about 14,000 were in the dark, according to USA TODAY Network’s power outage database as of 6:30 a.m. CT.
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Texas power outage map
As of about 6:30 a.m. CT, about 241,000 customers across the state did not have power, per outage tracking website PowerOutage.us. That’s down from the more than 400,000 outages reported on Thursday.
When will power be restored? Austin timeline open-ended
Austin city officials said Thursday 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.
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.”
– Luz Moreno-Lozano, Austin American-Statesman
More from the Austin American-Statesman:Austin power restoration time remains open-ended, utility says
Story Credit: usatoday.com