How people stayed cool without power on the hottest day of the year in Austin

Dunia Bautista was watching TV in her home in East Austin when her power went out.

“It’s really hot. It’s truly very hot,” Bautista said in Spanish. She sat on the porch with her kids, trying to cool off. “I bathed my baby because she’s vulnerable and young and was heating up, so I cooled her down,” Bautista said.

Wednesday was the city’s hottest day of the year so far and about 15,000 people were without power from about 5-9 p.m. in the East Austin and Riverside neighborhoods, according to Austin Energy. The utility company said high energy demand caused the outage.

The East Side can get pretty hot and suffers more from extreme heat than other parts of Austin. Without power, neighbors stepped outside to cool off, many fanning themselves on porches, while others packed up and left for places with electricity and running air conditioning.

Clint Muhlenburg said his power went out at around 5 p.m. and his house instantly warmed up. “I’d been sitting in the dark for a while and realized … this isn’t getting better,” he said, while loading his belongings and his dog into his car.

He thought the evening would cool things down a little, but when that didn’t happen, he made plans to head to a hotel. Muhlenburg said he had no idea when the power would be back and wanted better communication from Austin Energy.

“I know it’s probably a difficult circumstance for them but just communicating would be helpful,” he said.

Cooling centers in South Austin extended their hours until 11 p.m. in case people needed a place to escape the heat. They usually close at 9 p.m.

Wednesday’s heat overloaded a transformer, which helped prevent any serious damage to the system, but resulted in the power outage. Matt Mitchell, a spokesperson with Austin Energy, said the power was restored to all customers by 9 p.m. and crews checked on other systems across town to prevent similar power outages from happening.

“We are confident it will continue to operate as it should and we will not be in a situation like we were in yesterday,” he said.

When power returned to East Austin, a warm glow returned to neighborhood windows and Austin’s iconic moonlight towers flickered back on. Cheering could be heard from the street and some residents lit a firework in celebration.