Two months after Irene knocked out power to millions of customers on the East Coast, the Halloween nor'easter of 2011 left millions of homes and business dark again. In some places in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, patience is wearing thin with the pace of electric restoration. But what's causing this, and is it justified?
One reason that complaints are high with the Halloween storm is that this is the second event in a short amount of time. People's patience wears thin the more times an aggravating event occurs. When I'm in traffic and one guy cuts me off, I'm slightly annoyed. A second car cuts me off, and I'm not getting disturbed. A third guy does it and my fuse is gone. I think a lot of people are like this, and this second event is wearing on their nerves. If the East Coast gets another storm in the next couple of months, then people will be even more primed to react.
Obviously there is also a societal and economic factor in this. Whenever a major event occurs that shuts down businesses, keeps people from shopping, and stops the flow of money, it has a high impact on people. No power for a small business that depends upon every day's receipts to stay afloat can be devastating. The poor state of the economy only exacerbates this.
Another contributing factor to the severity of the storm appears to be the amount of advance warning that everyone had. With Hurricane Irene, the attention the storm got as it approached the East Coast was enormous (I'm not saying unjustified), and everyone had days to prepare for the upcoming damage. This includes the utilities, whose preparation work includes lining up crews from other utilities through pre-arranged mutual assistance agreement, placing resources in the right locations before the storms, insuring there is adequate inventory and spares for damaged equipment, and all of the logistics that go into preparing for the coming recovery over the next several days. With the Halloween nor'easter, some are saying that the limited advance warning impacted the number of crews that were immediately available and ready to work, with the result being extended times for restoration compared to the restoration time with more advance warning.
In a future post, I'll describe how integration of the systems that utilities use in storm restoration assist with the getting the lights back on quicker. That includes the outage management system, mobile workforce management system, interactive voice response, and situational awareness / dashboards / reporting. But for now, let's hope Mother Nature gives us a break for a while.
