If you live in an area with police station/jail, fire house, hospital, I think that sort of thing often puts you at the top of the list to get fixed when there's an issue.

Definately. Have all that and NASA just down the street. Just need to get that dang tree down safely…

We were only without power for 28 hours. After Hurricane Ike we were 8 days without. I got a generator soon after that. It really came in handy during the "Big Freeze" grid failure a few years ago. I had it hooked up to the blower on my gas furnace to keep the house at about 50°. I was able to deploy it this time when the eye came over and things calmed down for about 15 minutes. Kept the fridge going, the TV on to picking up news on broadcast as land line phone and internet were both down. Cell phone was spotty with only text and no voice or data.

Centerpoint is blaming private property tree's falling on their distribution lines as major factor.
Do these land owners around the easements have anything proactive that can be done?
Aging infrastructure above ground and extreme weather is the new risk that insurance actuaries are compensating for in insurance rates.

THat wouldn't surprise me, but I thought the utility was in charge of clearing trees.

We are in a different situation, out in the boonies where there is an electric co-op. We got a letter earlier this year that said "we're going to come around and trim trees if needed."

It is the responsibility of the utility to maintain the easement. It does not have anything at all to do with the people who own property adjacent to it.

I thought this was common knowledge

That is 100% accurate.

The easement documents even clearly indicate that.

When I lived in Colorado, I worked for a large electric T&D company and they had an excellent tree trimming program even for the tight back alley ways where access was tricky.

CenterPoint are back pedaling....their leadership lacks integrity as does their assets.

Was back online about 9:00 last night. Miserable. Small generator to run refrigerators but need to have a better plan for sleeping in this heat. Heading to my rich friends in Bunker Hill is not a plan, both have whole house generators, neither of them started. We’ve been in this house 20+ years and we have not lost power for this long if you add up all of the times we lost power before. Even in the big storms, Ike, Harvey, ice storm, etc., we have only lost power for 12-24 hours. Been fortunate until now. All things considered not a catastrophe, just a huge pain in the ass.