CenterPoint CEO grilled by Texas Senate committee over Hurricane Beryl failures

AUSTIN, Texas - Lawmakers grilled electricity providers about the preparations and response to Hurricane Beryl hitting the Houston area earlier this month.

Members of a special senate committee expressed frustration about multiple failures CenterPoint made during the hurricane, including not having an accurate outage map and response time data.

The state senators began their fact-finding by talking to the Director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, Nim Kidd, and Thomas Gleeson, the chairman of the Public Utility Commission.

That was followed by the CEOs of CenterPoint and Entergy, along with the president of American Electric Power Texas.

Nearly three million people lost power in the Houston area after the category one hurricane made landfall.

Officials say dozens of people died due to heat complications from losing power.

Questions on Monday ranged from ineffective leadership, lack of seriousness in preparation, communication failures, poor planning, disorganized operations and the failure to manage vegetation.

Lawmakers did not hold back.

"Your communications exasperated this and poured gasoline on the problem for millions of people," said State Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston). "The communication was horrid by any measurement I understand. And more importantly, so many opportunities were missed years ago to fix this problem in advance."

At one point during the aftermath of the storm, outage maps were being manually entered and were found to be inaccurate. Senators said it misled customers.

"I take personal accountability for not meeting our customers' expectations during Hurricane Beryl. It's my job as CEO to make sure we have the right team in the right roles," said Jason Wells, the CEO of CenterPoint.

Wells did push back against those calling for his job, saying he believes leaving his role now would slow improvement efforts.

"I think if I resign today, we lose momentum on the things that are going to have the best possible impact for the Greater Houston region," he said.

CenterPoint has announced initiatives for the future, which include resiliency investments.

READ MORE: CenterPoint's new outage tracker, emergency plans unveiled by CEO

They also plan to nearly double the size of their vegetation management crews to address one of the primary causes of outages: old trees knocking out the power lines.

Houston mayor John Whitmire also testified.

He says he is committed to holding CenterPoint accountable and that Houston is prepared for future storms.