HOUSTON — Some KHOU 11 viewers have driven by CenterPoint’s staging sites for out-of-town crews wanting to know why so many trucks were parked and not out in the field doing repair work.
So, the KHOU 11 Investigates team did some surveillance work Wednesday at three of the company’s 18 staging locations. Photojournalist John Gibson went to Tomball ISD stadium, and Investigative Reporter Jeremy Rogalski was across from Katy ISD’s Rhodes and Legacy stadiums.
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An out-of-state line worker also agreed to provide his perspective from Moody Gardens in Galveston.
At 8 a.m. at the Katy staging site, we chose three random trucks to keep an eye on: two white bucket trucks and one green tree-trimming truck.
In Galveston, we checked in with the lineman. He said he got on the clock at 6 a.m. It was just before 9 a.m. when we talked.
"We’re sitting in a parking lot," he said by phone.
Sitting and waiting for his work orders. At 10:20 a.m., the lineman texted "Still nothing." At 11:29 a.m., he texted "We got work now."
In Tomball, we took a video of every truck that left the staging site over three hours. Twenty trucks left the first hour, 30 the next hour, and 22 trucks during the third hour. The parking lot still had plenty of trucks when we left shortly after noon.
Back in Katy, the two white bucket trucks didn’t leave the site until 11:33 a.m.
The green tree trimming rig took off at 12:26 p.m. and headed west with three other repair trucks toward the town of San Felipe. By the time it set up at a job site there, the first dangling tree branch was cut at 1:18 p.m., more than five hours after KHOU 11 Investigates first monitored the truck at the staging site.
We shared our observations with CenterPoint Senior Vice President of Operations Darin Carroll.
KHOU 11 Investigates: "Viewers are saying, 'I see all these trucks but wonder why are they in this parking lot and not out in the field?'"
Carroll: "It's a fair question -- totally empathize with customers thinking that and wondering that. What I will tell you is that safety is at the forefront of everything that we do."
Carroll said external crews must undergo safety briefings and other logistical preparations and that can take time.
KHOU 11 Investigates: "Should it take four, five hours to get these guys moving and doing the work they were hired to do?"
Carroll: "It’s not something that happens in every case and, you know, we don’t know the exact circumstances of what may have happened, so I don’t want to speak to that as though it’s the norm."
The CenterPoint executive added that all outside mutual assistance crews are now in place and getting workers on the road should happen quicker going forward.