As electricity and water pressure began to stabilize in southeast Texas that week, the number of residents in local hotels fell.
During the worst parts of the winter storm, local hotels saw a surge in occupancy as refinery workers and families fled adverse conditions.
Officials at Port Arthur’s Hampton Inn & Suites and Holiday Inn Express said they had seen a noticeable increase, but the numbers fell on Thursday as electricity and water pressures returned to the area.
Temperatures dropped to teens on Tuesday when Entergy reported thousands of Southeast Texans without power. With burst pipes causing damage to houses and apartments and low water pressure in the entire district, many refugees searched the hotels.
Donald Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Lake Charles, said the Port Arthur area has seen between 1 and 2 inches of snow and ice and temperatures as low as 14 degrees.
A spokesman for Hampton Inn & Suites said the hotel was nearing capacity and had about two rooms available in its crowded form.
A front desk clerk at the Holiday Inn Express said the hotel had a higher number of residents, but that they were mostly refinery workers.
“With the storm, more and more people are trying to get closer to their jobs,” said the spokesman. “We also had people who came in because they had no electricity in their house. We had people locally and from Houston. We had people coming in that direction from there. If Houston still doesn’t have electricity, people stay here because the water is returning to the area. “
The storm left several parts of the Houston area with no electricity or water.
By Thursday afternoon, Hampton Inn & Suites had seen another slight increase in room purchases, but it was too early to say if it would stay that way for the entire weekend.
While parts of Jefferson County grapple with water pressure issues and power outages, the Hampton Inn & Suites reported a return to water pressure on Wednesday. On Thursday evening, Entergy reported that power was fully restored in Port Arthur and Mid-County.
The spokesman said the hotel’s occupancy varies depending on the day of the week. The occupancy usually increases Monday through Wednesday and begins to decrease with the weekend ahead.
“If the storm had happened over the weekend, we would have been sold out over the weekend,” said the Hampton Inn & Suites spokesman. “Since this happened on one of our busier nights anyway, a lot of people canceled and took over these rooms.”
None of the hotels were forced to turn away people due to their capacity.
