Dozens of Austin Energy customers still without power following storms

The 2021 Memorial Day weekend was a wet one indeed, with severe lightning, high winds, and flash flooding.

Austin Energy crews were still working in the field on Tuesday, to clear the streets of debris, down trees, and restore power to customers. 

Austin Energy updated the Austin City Council on the efforts Tuesday and says on Friday night, there were 37,800 customers without power.

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"Almost 90 percent of all customers were restored in the first 24 hours," said deputy general manager Sidney Jackson.

Jackson said the city is dealing with the aftermath of a series of three storms, all rolling in on Friday, Sunday and then Monday night. Frustrated customers said that they had been without power for days.

"This is not an issue of electrical system maintenance, design or operation, the main contributor is huge debris," said Jackson. "For those of you perhaps that don't consider severe thunderstorms to be particularly challenging, I'd ask that you reconsider your point of view."

Councilmember Alison Alter questioned the city's upkeep on trees. "We really do need to understand how much of what happened in this storm had to do with vegetation management practices," she said.

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"We will look and bring back data for this particular storm. Just based on experience, I am 100 percent confident we will find that vegetation management was positive," said Jackson.

As of Tuesday afternoon, there were approximately 70 customers without power.