Conroe couple tired of the dark Turns to Ted to get the light on

Thursday, February 6, 2020
Ted helps Conroe couple with broken street light
When Hurricane Harvey hit Conroe, it took out Pat and Carolyn Ullrich's street light. The pole is still there, but no light was coming from it until the couple Turned to Ted.

CONROE, Texas (KTRK) -- Hurricane Harvey hit Conroe just like the rest of our area and when it rolled out of Pat and Carolyn Ullrich's neighborhood, it took their street light out, too. The pole is still there, but no light was coming from it.

"It was pitch dark out here," Pat told 13 Investigates' Ted Oberg. "You couldn't see anything."

Pat called the city of Conroe and the electric company, Entergy, for years hoping someone would fix it. Entergy tells us it replaced a bulb in 2017, but didn't finish the fix which required underground digging. It's hard to tell if Conroe or the power company Entergy had the main responsibility, but either way, the light was still broken.

"I've been calling for three years. I've been calling the city of Conroe and they did come out and look at it, but nobody ever did anything," Pat said.

To prove how bad it was, his wife took a bunch of pictures of the dark corner. Looking them over, she told us. "(They show) absolutely nothing. It's dark."

Pat did see a little hope.

"I saw one of your stories, several of your stories, and said, 'Well, I might as well try this,'" Pat said explaining why he Turned to Ted. "I've tried everything else over the past three years."

Standing outside his home on what used to be a dark corner, he told Oberg, "You said you were going to call the electric company the next day and you did, and low and behold, they called me the same day and they sent somebody out here!"

Once that Entergy crew was done, the flow returned to the light on the Ullriches' street.

"100 percent difference," Carolyn told us standing below the now-illuminated light.

An Entergy spokesperson told 13 Investigates, they "always strive to meet our customers' expectations. In this instance, we did not."

The company did explain that they heard from the Ullriches right after Harvey and did replace a bulb, but didn't finish the job until recently.

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