Houston Blames Water Outage on Failure of Backup Transformer
- Schools may close for second day, depending on test results
- Generators couldn’t be used after transformer went down: mayor
This article is for subscribers only.
Houston’s citywide water outage stemmed from the failure of two electrical transformers at a key treatment complex that prevented officials from turning on backup generators.
The outage that shuttered schools, delayed surgeries and forced some restaurants and other businesses to close their doors in the fourth-largest US city on Monday may stretch into a second day, given that initial results of safety tests won’t be known until 3 a.m. local time.