Power struggle: How Tallahassee plans to tackle mass Idalia outages
Tallahassee is no stranger to power outages, especially when the tropics unleash wind speeds in the double digits.
But officials worried that Hurricane Idalia, one of the first ever major hurricanes to make landfall in the Apalachee Bay, could bring destruction to the electric grid unlike any the capital city has ever seen.
City officials say they have maxxed out resources, including recruiting 200-plus extra line workers, to restore power once Idalia’s winds die down.
"In preparation for what the National Weather Service predicted would be the strongest storm Tallahassee has ever seen, we have taken advantage of every available resource to aid in our restoration efforts, including more than tripling our electric linemen with mutual aid crews," he said in an email. "With impacts predicted to be more severe than Hurricanes Hermine or Michael, we are well-prepared to respond; however, residents should be prepared for power outages to last several days and implement their emergency plans."
In this question and answer with the Tallahassee Democrat, Mike Crow, assistant city manager for power delivery, discusses the city’s preparations and plans to turn the lights and A/C back on and how long that might take:
Q: What is the city of Tallahassee doing to prepare for the possibility of widespread outages?
A: We have extremely detailed storm response guidelines that we go by. Hurricane season’s obviously form June 1 through Nov. 30, so we prepare year round. What we’ve done in this instance is we’ve ... elected to go ahead and try to secure some mutual aid. We knew that it wouldn’t be coming from any local utilities within the state of Florida or even surrounding states like Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas — they’re all kind of holding steady to see what the storm does to them. So we reached out Sunday, and we started securing mutual aid. And we were able to get folks in (Tuesday) to pre-stage.”
Q: How many folks came in and where are they coming from?
A: Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Nebraska and Oklahoma is who we’ve secured mutual aid from so far. We’ve got about 135 lineman on hand now pre-staged at local hotels ... and they’ll be ready to respond in the morning as the storm enters our (area) as passes through.”
Q: How many line workers does the city of Tallahassee employ?
A: We have about 75 staff (who would be out in the field). We also have additional crews that will be arriving (Wednesday) and we have some that couldn’t make it here until Thursday.
Q: How many line workers are coming on those days?
A: About 100 additional staff.
Q: So we’re talking about perhaps tripling our manpower?
A: We are, yes, sir. The ones that are arriving (Wednesday) into Thursday would be the Ohio and Nebraska crews. They had a little bit further travel time.
Q: What’s the difference between the mutual aid workers and contract workers that are also helping?
A: We work through a network of mutual aid with our statewide agency, FMEA (the Florida Municipal Electric Association). They organize all of that mutual aid from Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Nebraska and Oklahoma — those are all other municipal utilties that are coming to assist us. Any additional help from contractors is something we secure on our own.”
Q: How many contract workers has the city secured?
A: They were able to send five crews, it’s about 30 total.
Q: Is this the biggest electric repair force that the city has ever mustered?
A: I would it rivals (past storms). We also had a lot of staff come on board during Hermine and Michael.
Q: What is the city doing differently in its approach to repairs since Hermine, a storm that prompted criticism over the city's pace of repairs, and Michael?
A: I feel like I have a different opinion than the narrative that was pushed on (Hermine), but I can tell you how we do differ. As our citizens have become more dependent on our electricity and the need for that and the political climate that’s involved, we became extremely proactive in our responses. On Sunday, we were securing mutual aid. We didn’t even know if we would be impacted at all, but we went ahead and pulled the trigger ... just in case, knowing if we weren’t impacted, we would have crews in the state of Florida that we could release to the other municipals that were impacted.
Q: What is the actual ground plan for power restoration?
A: We’ll have staff on site in place, we have staff staying overnight, just to make sure we have crews available. But we’ll wait until conditions are safe. That’s less than 35 mph sustained winds. And what we’ve done since Hermine in particular ... we split our service territory into four different quadrants: northeast, south and west. We have priority circuits identified in each of those quadrants, and we have crews assigned to each of those quadrants. We don’t just assign crews per storm — those crews are assigned to those quadrants year round. So they’re continuously familiarizing themselves with those areas, they’re riding these priority circuits, taking pre-emptive measures, looking at right-of-way issues, any kind of equipment issues, anything that they see that could become an issue in a storm. Obviously you can’t prevent everything, but they’re taking those kind of preemptive measures to ensure that those quadrants are taken care of prior to a storm.
Q: What about after the storm? Do they immediately start going into every little neighborhood?
A: It just depends on the storm, right? Going into this one, what we’re going to do is we’ll meet in the morning at 6 a.m. We’ll get an outage count. And we’ll go by circuit. We have our priority circuits: hospitals, nursing homes, critical electric facilities, storm shelters, law enforcement. And we’ll go down and we have each of those number in each quadrant. So we’ll start attacking those priority circuits first. And then we’ll be looking at our outage count and just kind of work our way down.
Q: There was still uncertainty Tuesday about where Idalia could go. But one of the worst-case scenarios is that it goes to St. Marks and that we get a strong windfield right here in town. If that were to happen,, what kind of damage would we see in Tallahassee?
A: We could see a multi-day restoration effort. We could see numerous, widespread outages, especially if this encompasses our entire system. We have a large system and it’s North Florida — we love our canopy roads, we have lots of tree coverage. So we can see a lot of downed power lines. If it continues to intensify the way they’re predicting and continues to shift in that westerly track, it could be very impactful to the area. It’s really hard to predict. If this storm does hit with the magnitude they’re saying ... that would essentially require all the mutual aid that we have. I think that we are adequately prepared for that. Also knowing that once this event gets localized, that a lot of resources within the state will free up. And we anticipate if there’s any additional crews needed to be able to be here within a day or so.
Q: When you say “multi-day,” could it take a week or more? If this storm is worse than Hermine and Michael, I assume the damage will be worse.
Q: You could assume that. It’s just there are so many variables involved. I don’t anticipate anything over seven to 10 days — a five or six day event. We have to work safely and efficiently, which we do. And these things take time. One of the things I have to kind of highlight is the fact that this is one of the many benefits of having a local utility. Our employees are world class. They live here, their families live here, and they have ownership with the community that we serve. They want to get power back on, they’re out there working their butts off day in and day out. I don’t anticipate even in a major hurricane, anything over a week as far as restoration.
A: Does the city know when a customer loses power? Do customers need to let the city know when they’re power goes out in a hurricane?
Q: We do monitor that in our control center, so we do see when outages occur. And we can tell, we have various means to do so. But we encourage any customers to make sure that they call in and report their outage. As the initial restoration starts and we get into what we call the “onesies” and “twosies,” that would be your biggest opportunity to have something. I don’t want to use the word “miss,” but it would be difficult to tell. So we do encourage our customers to call. Our customer service, we have folks staffed up to answer phones and all of that.
A: Should customers call a day or two later if their power is still out to see when it might come back on?
Q: We have additional staffing for that, so yes, we encourage them to do that.
A: What do you recommend for people who may be in the dark for several days or whatever it might be?
Q: For one, be patient and know that we’re working hard. We’re going to get to you. And just take those pre-emptive measures and make sure you have enough water, your essential needs, batteries, things like that. If you have a medical need, make a prior arrangements. We have several shelters around open, if power is essential to your livelihood, we encourage you to take advantage of those resources.
A: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?
Q: Just have confidence in your utility, know that we plan year round for this. We’re very well-trained. I feel like we earned that No. 1 public utility in the nation status, and our guys have ownership of this utility and this community that we serve. And we’ll be out there, and we won’t quit until everything’s restored.”
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee power outages from Idalia: The plan to reconnect the city
