ALICE, Texas — After a break in a natural gas pipeline in Alice on Monday, thousands of customers were without gas service.
As of this morning, almost 1,000 CenterPoint Energy customers have had their gas turned back on. About 3,600 Alice residents and business owners have been without natural gas since Monday.
According to City Manager Michael Esparza, CenterPoint Energy has been very organized and is restoring gas ahead of planned time.
CenterPoint Energy brought crews in from Mississippi and Louisiana yesterday, Esparza said.
They set up a command center at the Jim Wells County Fairgrounds in Alice and had trucks lined up for turning on meters.
Yesterday, the focus was on restoring service for businesses, nursing homes and those residents with special needs. The majority of businesses and restaurants had their gas turned back on last night.
Now, CenterPoint Energy is continuing to go door to door to restore gas for the remaining residents in the area. For the company to restore gas energy for these residents, the residents must be at home.
For the people who are not home when crews stop by, there will be a second sweep later in the day.
Esparza says about half of residential cities have some kind of gas service and they are working hard to ensure that those residents are being taken care of.
Company officials expect everyone should be back on line by the end of the week.
The outage was caused when someone plowing a field cut the city's main gas line.
