Sep 23 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Brett Clanton and Lynn Cook Houston Chronicle

As a third of Houston-area residents enter an 11th day without power, they face a slowing pace of recovery and what seems to many an inexplicable process that restores electricity to some homes while others nearby remain dark.

As summer-like temperatures returned, some customers' lights and air conditioners came on while neighbors as close as next door were without power and without much information about why the power is still out and when it will come back.

Fueling the heat Monday were reports that unidentified elected officials have promised their constituents a better place in line, said a spokesman for CenterPoint Energy, the area's largest power transmission company.

Spokesman Floyd LeBlanc would not divulge the names of the politicians.

But he said the company held a conference call Monday afternoon with local, state and federal elected officials to ask them not to make promises they cannot keep.

"It doesn't work that way. We have, all along, said we're restoring power to the most customers as possible in the shortest amount of time possible," he said.

But exactly how it does work remained a mystery to many residents.

"I called them twice already this morning, and they couldn't tell us anything," said Pat Loeber, 74, who lives with her 75-year-old husband, Fritz, in the Westwood neighborhood in southwest Houston. "I see workers on the street, and they can't tell us anything."

A couple of days ago, all the houses on the opposite side of the street from the Loebers got their power back, but on Monday the Loebers were still without electricity.

LeBlanc said CenterPoint's crews are working to restore line fuses, which serve 100 to 300 customers. Until those are back up, the crews can't identify failures in transformers -- the cylindrical devices on poles that typically affect fewer than 10 customers.

And when crews finish working on one fuse, they move to the next one -- not to the failed transformers -- in hopes of bringing a larger group of customers online.

LeBlanc said 8,200 line fuses went down in the storm and almost half are still out.

CenterPoint is not yet saying when transformer repairs will start.

The company says 11,000 workers -- including 8,000 who came from out-of-state utilities under cooperative agreements -- are working on the problem. In a regulatory filing today, the company said repairs could cost as much as $500 million and power failures will cut into profits.

As reported by the Chronicle previously, the company also confirmed it plans to seek a rate increase to spread the cost of repairs across its customers.

As for the here and now, some customers who want to know when power crews will arrive on their block say they aren't getting answers.

Britany Vinsant, who has a 2-month-old son and is still without electricity and water in the Pinedale Mobile Home Community off Highway 249 near Tomball, said calls to CenterPoint have yielded the less-than-reassuring answer that most of her area has power. The company has refused to give any time frame for when a crew will come.

Raffi Tcholakian runs Phoenicia Specialty Foods, a grocery store and imported food wholesaler in West Houston that finally got up and running Saturday thanks to generators provided by his insurance company.

"We've been calling CenterPoint constantly, the main number and their executives' offices. We can't get an answer," he said.

Phoenicia is burning $2,000 worth of diesel fuel a day to keep its generators running so refrigeration systems function and food doesn't spoil.

As Tcholakian tries to keep his wares cool, another boss is feeling heat.

"We know how frustrated people are getting," CenterPoint Chief Executive David McClanahan said in an interview Monday. "We're hearing about it from customers. We've made good progress, but we wish it were faster."

And for those who have been keeping a close watch but haven't seen a single truck in their neighborhood? CenterPoint says customers may get power back without ever seeing a crew.

"We're still working at the line fuse level," LeBlanc says. That means crews out of sight to most households could replace a fuse and put scores of customers back on the grid, though some served by the fuse could remain dark if a transformer has blown or the drop line that serves individual customers has failed or fallen.

As of this morning, CenterPoint said 616,000 customers, 27 percent, were still without power, down from nearly all of its 2.3 million customers immediately following the hurricane's landfall early Sept. 13.

An additional 500 linesmen and tree trimmers from out of state will be on the ground in Houston today.

The company put out the call for more help because some neighborhoods are still so tangled in fallen trees and limbs that power crews can't even get to the lines.

That includes posh River Oaks, poorer parts of Magnolia Park, Manvel in the south and Cypress to the north.

"It's like hand-to-hand combat in there," LeBlanc said.

Aerial assessments from helicopters couldn't give clear pictures of most power distribution lines on private easements and rights of way.

"In a lot of these places, the trees are taller than the power lines. We can't see from overhead, so it's really inspecting everything from pole to pole," he said.

Entergy Texas, with nearly 400,000 customers to the north and east of Houston, had restored power to 92 percent by this morning, and Texas-New Mexico Power Co., with 115,000 customers in Galveston, Brazoria and Matagorda counties, had restored 82 percent as of Monday.

By Brett Clanton and Lynn Cook. Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

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