Cold weather challenges utilities provision in Houston

HOUSTON, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Electricity and gas service in Houston experienced test of freezing weather as the cold spell gripped the region in the U.S. state of Texas early Monday through Wednesday.

"We had a few weather-related outages, but the amount was fairly minimal. However, we are still working to get all customers back in service as soon as possible," said Olivia Ross, a spokesperson of CenterPoint Energy, which has 2.4 million electricity consumers in the area.

Service was restored to more than 75,000 customers, Ross told Xinhua on Wednesday. There were 566 customers without electricity on Wednesday afternoon, she added.

Ross said the outages were related to equipment not being able to withstand the cold weather.

CenterPoint, which also provides natural gas service in the Houston area, told Xinhua that about 1,400 customers in Cleveland, a town northeast of Houston, were without natural gas service because of the cold weather. The weather caused some of the equipment to fail.

"The effort to restore their gas service is still in process. Crews will turn all of the (gas) meters off, purge air from the system and then relight each pilot light in each home," Ross said. "It will take 48 to 72 hours to restore service to those homes."

City and county leaders throughout the area urged people to stay inside and off the roads throughout the cold spell. There were reports of hundreds of traffic accidents in the area because of the weather.

The arctic air mass that blew through Houston earlier this week brought freezing rain, sleet and frigid temperatures to the city, causing the mercury to dip to a 22-year low Wednesday.

Houston city shut down schools and businesses for two straight days as temperatures plummeted to minus 4 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, which marked the lowest temperature since 1996. Enditem