A huge part of the aftermath of this kind of storm are the power outages, hundreds of thousands of people are already reportedly without power, and CenterPoint is sending crews to help.
This is the work already underway in Louisiana, especially in New Orleans where late Tuesday these power crews were already at work. In anticipation of these conditions, work crews here in Houston have already been preparing to help.
CenterPoint says it's honoring a request from Entergy Louisiana for assistance in restoring power to the hundreds of thousands of customers experiencing an outage right now.
About 80 linemen and support personnel from CenterPoint will make the trip later Wednesday or Thursday morning to Lafayette, Louisiana. They were scheduled to leave Wednesday morning, but were put on hold because of the slow-moving nature of the storm.
In order for the crews to do their work, they need better weather conditions with winds under 35mph.
"We'll be setting poles, stringing wire, replacing transformers, anything else that they may need us to do," said Thomas Klesel, CenterPoint Operations Manager.
They anticipate being out there 7 to 10 days, working 14 hours a day to restore power to those in the Gulf Coast region.
Houston was on the receiving end of this kind of assistance following Hurricane Ike. At that time, CenterPoint brought in 11,000 outside resources to restore power in the Houston area.
