Crews From 31 States in Texas to Restore Power

In the wake of Hurricane Ike, officials fear it could take weeks to restore power in some places, like Galveston and the towns near the Louisiana border, because major transmission lines have been knocked out, substations have been swamped and trees have fallen on neighborhood lines.

“It’s a rare event when you will see physical damage to most of the grid,” said Mayor Bill White of Houston. “Hurricane Ike, with our power company, was that kind of event.”

About two million customers remained without power across eastern Texas as of Tuesday afternoon, three days after the hurricane hit.

Hundreds of thousands of students were still out of school, mail delivery was suspended, most businesses had yet to open, hundreds of intersections lacked traffic signals and government agencies were struggling to provide services. Some hospitals, including the main hospital in Galveston, operated on generators.

Entergy, the utility that serves the area east of Houston, has restored power to about 40,000 of its 395,000 customers. CenterPoint, which serves Houston and Galveston, had made more progress, but still had 1.5 million customers in the dark.

In Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city and the center of its oil industry, signs of prolonged blackout are everywhere — in long lines at the few gasoline stations with power to run pumps, in the huge demand for ice at government food-distribution centers, in the low number of grocery stores that are open, and in the grumbling of ordinary citizens. Refineries in Texas remain closed.

In eastern Texas, near the Louisiana border, the hurricane knocked down more than 100 towers holding high-voltage transmission lines, damaged 272 substations and flooded the Sabine Power Station in Bridge City, driving snakes and wild animals into the plant, officials at Entergy Texas said.

The infrastructure around Houston fared better. Most high-voltage lines remained intact and the main damage was to the distribution lines in neighborhoods, officials at CenterPoint said. On Tuesday, about 24 high voltage transmission lines were still out of service, five of them running into Galveston.