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By Jordan King
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A group of restaurants in Texas are suing CenterPoint Energy over power outages after Hurricane Beryl.
More than 140,000 Texans are in their second week without power since the storm made landfall last Monday and shut power out for more than 2.2 million.
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, and is believed to have killed at least 13 people in the Houston area alone, according to the Houston Chronicle's analysis of county figures. The official death toll is yet to be revealed.
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While many have seen their electricity return, several business owners think it took too long and are accusing CenterPoint Energy, a Houston utility that provides power for more than 2.8 million people, of failing to do its job.
One of these people is Ryan Lachaine, who is the executive chef and partner at Riel Restaurant in Montrose. He told local TV station ABC13 that he went without power for a full week, leaving his 20 employees unable to work.
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He said: "Restaurants are difficult at the best of times, and when something like this happens, it is absolutely devastating. We all knew this was going to happen, something was going to happen.
"And it's kind of frustrating when we're supposed to be ready all the time, and hunker down or do this or do that, and when it comes time for someone else to do their job, nobody's ready."
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Another restaurateur, Robin Wong, said: "Being a city that's as large as Houston is, we can't keep having these problems. It needs to be fixed.
"[Losing power in these storms] just long enough to lose all the food in your walk-in is just enough to where you have to start over."
Lachaine's attorney Tony Buzbee is representing him in the class action lawsuit, focusing on restaurants which have been open for more than a year and lost power for at least 48 hours.
Buzbee said: "CenterPoint doesn't know, they don't know their grid. They have clearly not invested in infrastructure to prevent things like this."
CenterPoint Energy told Newsweek it does not comment on potential litigation.
In its most update on the power situation in Texas, published on Monday, the company stressed it had restored power to more than 2 million customers and said it expects to reach 98 percent restoration by the end of Wednesday.
Senior vice president Lynnae Wilson said: "We are grateful to our customers for their patience as our crews have worked around the clock and in difficult conditions to get the lights and air conditioning back on for over 2 million impacted customers as safely and quickly as possible.
"We know the remaining customers are counting on us and [we] are committed to restoring power to all remaining customers able to receive it. As we close in on the remaining outages, customers should ensure that there isn't damage to their weather heads and are able to receive power."
Last week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott instructed the Public Utility Commission to investigate the power outages—why they happened and why so many of them have lasted this long.
In an interview from a trip in Asia, he told Bloomberg TV: "They should not be losing power. I want to find out, was there a structural flaw with regard to the electrical delivery system?"
"Was that the cause of it? If so, what needs to be done to shore up, or was this a personnel issue of not having enough power personnel in all the right locations to get power back up?"
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