CenterPoint Energy crews faced with significant challenges from extensive damage in ongoing storm restoration effort

Evansville, Ind. – April 3, 2024 – In the aftermath of Tuesday’s severe storms that swept through southwestern Indiana, with winds in excess of 80 miles per hour, CenterPoint Energy and contract crews have been tirelessly working to restore power to thousands of customers affected by widespread damage.

Crews have restored power to 60% of the 24,000 customers left without power after Tuesday’s storms. As of 9:30 p.m., there are approximately 6,300 customers without power. Restoration may continue to take more time than usual as crews continue to uncover damage and encounter new challenges while making repairs.

CenterPoint Energy is using a wide range of resources to address severe vegetation damage, extensive debris, downed poles and lines and continued identification of a significant amount of previously unidentified damage. Additional outages have been caused by wind gusts today, further increasing the challenges of making necessary repairs and restoring service.

“While the progress may not yet be fully visible in the number of outages restored, our crews continue to work tirelessly to restore service as safely and quickly as possible,” stated Richard Leger, Senior Vice President, Indiana Electric at CenterPoint Energy. “The extensive damage from this storm has been unlike anything seen by many of our linemen – a great number of them with decades of experience.

Many of the challenges crews have faced are comparable to the type of damage experienced with multiple storm events:

• More than 150 downed poles in the Evansville metro area

• Multiple transformer replacements and spans of wire to be replaced

• Many orders require tree trimming and clearing of vegetation before repair work can begin

• Crews have encountered inaccessible poles, leading to increased repair times

The company is communicating with customers who will continue to experience extended outages into tomorrow, Friday and the weekend.

CenterPoint Energy would like to remind customers if they have experienced damage to the weatherhead

– the point of entry from the service drop to the home – the customer will need to have a licensed electrician make necessary repairs before power can be restored.

For the latest information on power outages:

• Report outages by texting the word “OUT” to 83212.

• Sign up for Power Alert Service® for information on individual outages.

• Follow @CenterPoint on X (formerly known as Twitter) and visit our outage map for general outage locations; and

• Visit CenterPoint Energy’s Electric Outage Center for electric safety tips and other resources.