Hurricane Harvey: Texas power outages affect more than quarter-million
More than a quarter-million customers are without power in Texas early Saturday after Hurricane Harvey made landfall. Utilities are reporting outages affecting more than 336,000 customers as of 3 p.m. ET.
AEP reported more than 216,000 customers without power as of early Saturday. CenterPoint Energy reported more than 21,000 customers without power. Excel reported more than 78,000 outages.
Outages were also reported by Austin Energy, CPS, Entergy and Oncor.
Louisiana utilities are reporting more than 900 customers without power Saturday afternoon.
The fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade made landfall Friday night about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi as a Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds. It gradually weakened over the next several hours, and by morning the National Hurricane Center had downgraded Harvey to a Category 1.
At 2 p.m. ET Harvey was downgraded to a tropical storm, with sustained winds of 70 mph. Parts of Texas may get as much as 40 inches of rain over the next few days, with "catastrophic and life threatening flooding from excessive rainfall" expected, the National Weather Service said.
Melissa Munguia, deputy emergency management coordinator in Nueces County, which includes Corpus Christi, said early Saturday that it could be hours before crews could fully assess the damage in coastal communities.
