Officials say establishing relationships now with various utility companies -- before the next major outage -- will be the key in providing better information to the public.
When Superstorm Sandy struck, Phillipsburg Mayor Harry Wyant Jr. listened in on regular conference calls with other municipal officials and Jersey Central Power & Light.
But information from those calls was minimal.
“What we were hearing was not what we wanted to hear. We didn’t have specifics,” Wyant said. “They were giving us numbers and locations that were back on, but we needed to know when we were going to be back on or when a certain area in town was going to be back on.”
Palmer Township Supervisors Chairman David Colver echoed Wyant’s frustrations, saying, “Everybody wants better contact with the utility companies.”
Joe Nixon, a spokesman for PPL Electric Utilities, said the power company understands the need to continually improve communications during major storms. Since severe storms in 2011, including a destructive Halloween snowstorm, Nixon said PPL has increased the number of phone lines into its customer center to handle exceptionally high call volumes. Outages can now be reported remotely, he said.
Sandy’s destruction created unprecedented challenges, he said.
“We had more than 1 million customer contacts during Sandy. In terms of outages, it was our worst storm with about 524,000 customers affected and more than 4,000 trouble locations,” Nixon said. “We had our largest ever storm recovery field force, with help from more than 50 companies from 16 states.”
The utility faced the challenge of having to provide accurate power-restoration times after the immense storm as damage assessments poured in. The utility provided area restoration times, target dates and times for a specific region, he said. As repair jobs were assessed and dispatched, more specific restoration times were available.
JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano said the utility last week met with New Jersey mayors and legislators and introduced new practices designed to provide additional information in the wake of major disasters.
The company has launched smartphone apps to make it easier for customers to report a power outage, view the company’s 24/7 power center maps or access JCP&L accounts, Morano said. Later this year, customers will be able to receive outage or account information via text message or email.
Scott Surgeoner, spokesman for Pennsylvania FirstEnergy/Met-Ed, said the utility is working with Northampton County officials to identify additional ways to improve its restoration efforts and communications.
“It is important to remember that those restoration times are estimates -- and many times we find additional damage work which can greatly impact restoration estimates,” Surgeoner said.
Surgeoner said Sandy was the first time the utility used Twitter in Pennsylvania.