Articles To help Project Leaders
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Last Sunday, we awoke to a winter wonderland. Gorgeous views of snow-covered trees. Typical of February in New England. However, it was the aftermath of the historic 2011 October storm - Alfred. I could see that it was like no other storm when I had to drive around trees to find out that my street was blocked at both ends from downed power lines and it was impossible to get to church.
Here are the lessons learned from this past week from this Professional Project Manager, father, husband, resident of South Windsor, and "pay my bills on time" customer of Connecticut Light & Power. There is no way to predict a historic storm like this. The previous total for snow in October was just over an inch. This time, we had 12 inches. The last time this happened, was .. uh .. never.
Firstly, a huge thank you to:
- CT L&P employees who worked extreme hours to get power restored. Line crews working in cold days and even colder dark nights. Long shifts of manual labor are no fun. I have been there and done that. Thank you, thank you.
- Employees, contractors and their supportive families, who travelled from other states to help us restore power. Thank you.
- Volunteers who ran shelters. I was grateful to get a bit of warmth and companionship at a shelter this week. Thank you - volunteers did a great job of organizing and executing quickly. Fortunately FEMA wasn't involved.
- Boy Scouts of America. Due to training from BSA, my son and I possess skills and equipment to survive these conditions and we were never in danger of perishing in below freezing weather.
1. Jeff Butler. Oh My! I had no idea who is before this week. Here is the good, bad and ugly.
Good: Jeff faced the media and took questions in briefings with Governor Dan Malloy. We listened to many of them on WTIC 1080, because we did not have much else to do for six dark and cold days and nights. Jeff set a goal of restoring power for 99% of our town by Sunday 11/6/2011 and the line crews reached our house before the goal. Jeff restated his words about the weather forecasters which was the right thing to do.
Bad: We should have had 6,000 employees, contractors, line crews, or however the numbers are being reported, on the ground on Tuesday, not Saturday. It was clear on Sunday morning that this was historic damage. You did not need a two day assessment to figure this out.
Why fiddle the numbers? First we reported line crews and tree crews. Then line crews and subdivisions of other crews. Was it because the numbers did not appear impressive? This is not the first outage ever - what is the standard operating procedure for this?
Why do crews need to drive their trucks from Florida and then take time to recover before they can start working? In the army, we regularly had convoys of drivers to transport equipment and then the operators flew to the end point to pick up trucks. Get someone to drive the trucks, and fly line crews in so that they can start work immediately.
Setting a estimate that I will have power by Monday 12:05 AM, and then changing it to Sunday 11:45 PM, was not helpful, because my estimate was the same as most of the other consumers in the state. Given that my power was restored on Saturday at 8:26 PM shows that it was never an estimate in the first place - merely a SWAG.
Why setup a text messaging system that will notify me when power will be restored, and then not use it? My power is restored and I never got a text message with status, other than the initial message saying that the estimate was Sunday at 11:59 PM. Pointless functionality.
Ugly: What do you mean that you are still busy with the "lessons learned" from Irene? Obviously, it is not much of a priority in the executive suite. What do you mean that you haven't paid the contractors from Irene? Does that mean that I also don't have to pay my bills to you?
In summary, I have to wonder how this CTL&P and this situation could have been managed worse. Then four letters came to mind - FEMA. For my international readers, FEMA stands for "Too Little, Too Late". FEMA has been noticeably absent in the past week, even though we have a state of emergency here. Fortunately, I hear that representatives of FEMA arrived late in the week to assess the situation. Whoopee! Another month or so, then FEMA should be ready to start planning for a solution. If I can fly around the world in 40 hours, then why does it take FEMA five days to get to Connecticut?
2. The weather forecasters let us down on predicting this storm. Sure, they said it would be historic event. The problem is that they cry wolf so often, that it is impossible to determine if a rain shower on South Street (thanks to the doppler that pinpoints every raindrop), is as important as a 12 inch snow event in October that will lead to a state of emergency. We need a way to categorise weather forecasts from "I am puffing this up to increase viewer ratings" to "Take cover, we are in for a week without power". Weather forecasts need to distinguish severity of the weather prediction.
3. Values shift in these times. Candles, flashlights, batteries, friends with hot water, a shelter with heat all become important in these times.
4. We need to reeducate drivers on the use of intersections when traffic lights are out. I experienced courteous and careful drivers who approached intersections as 4-way stops, and we got through them safely. I also witnessed multiple instances of drivers racing through intersections as if it was their right of way. The ensuing accidents placed unnecessary burden on our police officers.
5. Kudo's to South Windsor Chief of Police - Matt Reed - for speaking up and telling CT L&P that it would be on their head if emergency responders could not get to a scene because CT L&P did not respond to calls to make roads safe.
6. Thanks to WTIC 1080 for keeping us informed during the week. Without power, Internet or Cable TV, our only source of information was a portable radio. Way to go - WTIC 1080.
7. Kudo's to Governor Dan Malloy. Good job in tough times. Daily briefings, working with our congressional team to bring this to the attention of President Obama. Keep the pressure up on CT L&P to make sure we are able to respond better to outages in the future.
7. When redesigning the power grid (if CT L&P executive suite ever get around to actually learning the lessons from Winter Storm Alfred), here are suggestions. Traffic lights were a big problem. A. Why not have backup generators for traffic lights B. Why not have the traffic lights on seperate circuits, so that a single generator can power multiple intersections?
8. The politicaly buzzwword of the week is "underwhelmed". You ain't a politician if you did not use it at least once this week.
9. We had to empty our fridge and freezers. We estimate that we lost $300 worth of food due to this extended outage. Maybe not a lot of money for Jeff Butler, but it sure hurts the first-generation immigrant.
10. CTL&P website team did a good job of getting the outage information on the website, outage map, etc. It was quickly developed and made available to the public.
11. Shh!! Don't tell anyone. This has been perfect temperature for the current creations in Botha Basement Brewery. My Oatmeal Stout and Alf-Bock fermented just great at 59 degrees in the basement.
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