Left Without Power But Not Powerless

This summer, shortly after I started my internship with LCV and Chispa, all of my family in Houston was on high alert. This was because a hurricane was coming into the area. The last time we had a storm, there was a major flood, and we had a power outage for about four days, so we were nervous. 

Luckily we’ve learned from past experiences, and my immediate family (my Mom and sister) and I are now always prepared for any storm heading our way. While I was still bracing for a possible power outage, the more I read, the more it seemed like the storm had calmed down and that we wouldn’t be affected.

This was not the case, especially when I fell asleep. During the eight hours I was asleep, the tropical storm turned into a hurricane, and the path shifted. It was hitting the Houston area dead on, and at 5 a.m., I woke up covered in sweat because our power was completely out. Luckily, I had emailed my supervisors saying this might happen, but this was just the beginning of a very long and arduous journey of surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl.  

The heat in the house started to ramp up. It got so hot that spending the day outside in the heat was better than inside our “oven house,” as my sister called it. If you have ever been to Houston in the summer, you know that spending longer than a couple of hours in the heat, even with shade, can be brutal. 

As we started our first day without power, we saw the news on our phones and realized that trees had fallen all over the city, damaging a lot of infrastructure. We learned some of this wind damage had happened right outside our house, including many of our neighbors’ roofs that fell off their house. We helped them put parts of their roof we found on the ground in our backyard so that the strong winds wouldn’t blow it away even further. News reports painted a picture of the whole city being in disarray, trees falling on people’s homes everywhere, and power outages facing 2.7 million people in Houston. 

We realized we probably wouldn’t have our power for at least today. As the day went on, the thought of getting power started to fade even more, and we realized that we had no idea when power would be returning. This was a sentiment that a lot of people in the area shared. We heard that a good number of people were getting some of their power back, with some businesses getting their power back, too. 

The heat was unbearable so I decided I wanted to get some A/C and some power to charge my laptop and my phone. So we went to some local businesses closer to downtown, and I began to notice a pattern. Higher-income areas were often the ones to get their power back first. Businesses and homes near the community I lived in, a diverse middle-class community, did not have power back yet. As I began to research more, I discovered it was because most people in wealthier neighborhoods had generators, while everyone else often didn’t. 

While charging my electronics in the coffee shop, I realized one company has a monopoly over all the energy in Houston: Centerpoint Energy. The electricity was out due to the Houston energy grid’s lack of regulation and diversification. All this caused me to understand events that have hit Houston and Texas in the past with a new viewpoint. It was a lack of government oversight that caused problems to become even worse. 

We were extremely desperate to get relief on the third day without power. We were lucky to find a restaurant not too far from us serving lunch, and it was like paradise. The A/C was blasting, and I finally felt at peace as I began to read while my sister and mom talked about where my sister wanted to go to college. After a long day of reading and eating at the nice air-conditioned restaurant, we decided to go home. Once we got home, it was still miserable. I went for a swim in our local pool to cool off. When I came home around dinner time, the power had finally come back on!

The thermostat said the house’s temperature had risen to a boiling 95 degrees. It was like a miracle the power was on, and we were all celebrating as if power and electricity were something we had never had before. 

As the days and even weeks passed, more and more Houstonians started regaining their electricity. This was a good thing, but because of the massive power outages, Houston had 36 deaths that could have been prevented. 

Many of those deaths were due to power outages caused by Centerpoint’s lack of hurricane preparedness. While the governor is planning on investigating Centerpoint, I don’t know if the government will actually do anything about it. 

As climate change worsens, we can’t count on the government alone to fix things. Chispa and LCV have been working on the ground in states like Texas to help organize communities so the power of the people fights against these regional problems. For instance, Chispa Texas is working with community organizers to build grassroots power against air pollution in all communities, particularly communities of color. This pollution from refineries and Big Oil makes climate change worse and leads to stronger and more costly hurricanes like Beryl which wreck our communities. 

By interning at Chispa, I have been able to work on other community-driven solutions, such as creating Congressional memos for electric school buses and presenting my own environmental recommendations to the LCV organization. I have truly seen how to make a difference in the environment and our communities. 

This summer, I have been able to see why the work we’ve done these past few months can actually save lives. I want to thank Chispa for allowing me to work with an organization that helps create an environment where future generations don’t have to worry about power outages from hurricanes, massive air pollution from factories, or having their voice not heard by their own government.