While it is a cliché -- if you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a minute -- it is a guiding maxim to our emergency-management storm restoration process.
In developing our annual response plans for major electric outages, we plan for the unexpected. It was about one year ago when we were dealing with the freakish Halloween snowstorm.
Each year, we prepare detailed plans that follow the Incident Command System structure, which is a model developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide a flexible, scalable response, using a common framework.
During large-scale outages, the resources needed to restore power safely and quickly are tremendous, so every Unitil employee is assigned a specific function during major events. For us, that means more than 400 employees are mobilized, in addition to outside crews that are brought in. Often, for major events, this exceeds 1,000 individuals.
As you may imagine, there are numerous tasks that must be executed in a sequential manner after a major storm. Sometimes, folks will get frustrated during the assessment period following an outage, since we are focused on public safety and can't provide specific restoration times until we've done a damage assessment.
This assessment period is vital for public safety and for providing accurate information. We first respond to downed wires, which are public-safety issues, while concurrently assigning resources to identify the infrastructure that has been damaged.
The information gathered allows us to restore power first to critical infrastructure, such as hospitals, followed by repairs to the main lines that restore the largest number of customers. In addition, the assessment ensures the crews will have the equipment necessary to make the repairs and allows us to give you, the customer, a clear picture as to how long we think restoration will take...
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Richard Francazio is director of emergency management and compliance for Unitil.
