Officials take lessons from ice storm

CAPITAL REGION — It was nothing like the devastating mid-December ice storm, but wind-driven power outages and sub-zero wind chills last week gave emergency responders yet another reminder of the need to plan for those times nature plays havoc with modern lifestyles.

“We’ve come to understand that we seem to be having more and more of these types of events,” said Paul Lent, emergency services director for Saratoga County. “We can’t treat these as once every 10 years events anymore,” he said.

Lent is one of dozens of local officials, state and federal agencies and volunteers still evaluating the aftermath of the Dec. 11 ice storm that knocked out power to close to 275,000 people in the Capital Region for several days.

So far, estimates of the storm’s cost in labor, equipment and other municipal expenses have reached nearly $6 million in Schenectady County, about $6.4 million in Saratoga County and about $1 million in Schoharie County, according to local emergency managers. Utility companies are due to file reports about their response with the Public Service Commission by mid-February, according to PSC spokeswoman Anne Dalton.

Preliminary reviews by power companies and most local officials indicate that they were generally pleased with how the massive emergency was handled.

Still, there are some lessons to be learned, Lent said. Because shelters and warming sites are limited by the availability of backup generators, he sees a need to get more emergency generators in place. Towns and fire departments around Saratoga County quickly set up nine warming centers, but “we would have had more, if we had more generators,” Lent said.

Even at those nine sites, Lent said one of the generators was “balky,” pointing to the need for more preventive maintenance to make sure existing generators are ready to fire up at a moment’s notice.

Lent also said he worried that residents buying home generators for the first time may not have learned how to safely use them. A Glenville couple was killed by the carbon monoxide from generator exhaust fumes seeping from a garage into their house during the storm-related power outage.

Lent said generator owners need to take some time during non-emergency conditions to test out their generators and to make sure they have a well-ventilated area to use them. “During an emergency is not the time you want to learn how to operate them,” he said.

In Schenectady County, shelter organizers discovered “there was an issue about having enough cots available,” said Acting Director of Emergency Management John Nuzback. To fill the expected need during the storm, the county borrowed cots from Montgomery County, and it has since purchased 100 cots and blankets for future use, Nuzback said.

As many as 100 people came to a Glenville shelter on the Friday and Saturday after iced trees and lines brought down power Thursday night, Dec. 11, and the following morning. Other shelters and warming centers were set up at Schenectady County Community College, Union College and area fire departments.

Local efforts

Nuzback, whose primary job is as Schenectady fire coordinator, noted that volunteer firefighters were a major factor in helping people weather the storm safely. Firefighters were busy for days pumping out basements where sump pumps lost power or making welfare checks and offering safety advice to rural and city residents.

“We need more locally based trained volunteers,” said Judith Warner, Schoharie County’s emergency management director. That includes more Red Cross training and volunteers with the Health Department’s Medical Reserve Corps.

Charged with coordinating all sorts of emergencies in a mostly rural county of only about 32,000 residents, Warner voiced some frustration with the difficulty of getting aid agencies, and even news media, to pay attention to some of the more distant areas, as much as 60 miles from Albany-area headquarters. Efforts to set up shelters were sometimes delayed by the need to wait for certified Red Cross volunteers to find their way along rural roads, some blocked by fallen tree limbs or power lines, Warner noted.

About 7,000 Schoharie County households, accounting for about half the total county population, were out of power during much of the weekend.

About 25 or 30 Schoharie County residents are already trained as Red Cross volunteers in various capacities, Warner said. She’d like to see that number grow to around 100.

American Red Cross officials agree with the need for more trained volunteers throughout the region.

“Judy is absolutely right; we need more volunteers,” said Christine Powers, regional spokeswoman for the Albany-based American Red Cross of Northeastern New York.

Keeping in touch

Better communication is also something local officials are looking for. In many power outages, regular hard-wired telephones continue to work. But with heavy coatings of ice on lines and breaking trees downing even sturdy telephone cables, many telephone lines went dead or had intermittent service in the aftermath of the December storm. Users of Internet-based services lost telephone service as electricity or broadband cables went down. Some cellphone users also experienced interruptions.

While the Schenectady County office building didn’t lose power to vital computer data and radio systems, Nuzback said, “we need to look at backup generators.” He said the state Emergency Management Office sent a satellite phone system to the Public Works Department to help out with potential communications problems.

Rural areas with spotty or nonexistent cellphone service also had problems. The loss of telephone service for several hours left a warming shelter at the Gallupville Lutheran Church, in the Schoharie County town of Wright, without any way to contact emergency officials, according to Willie Karlau, a shelter volunteer. Once notified of the problem, the county emergency office sent a ham radio operator to the shelter.

While generally praising the work of the Red Cross and utilities National Grid and New York State Electric and Gas to restore power, Schoharie County Board of Supervisors Chairman Earl Van Wormer III acknowledged that the county’s small population and rural location sometimes means a lower priority.

“We pull teeth in trying to get people to come out,” Van Wormer told supervisors during a meeting a few days after the storm.

Volunteer push

The Red Cross is hoping to capitalize on the fresh memories of the ice storm to launch an effort to attract more potential volunteers to classes that are soon to be scheduled, according to Powers. Powers said she hopes to double the number of the 550 trained volunteers in the Northeast Chapter within a few years.

In situations such as residential fires, local volunteers can respond quickly, with emergency kits kept in their vehicles. “But opening a shelter is different than just responding to a tragedy,” she said. “It’s great to have spontaneous volunteers, but running a shelter is not as easy as it sounds. It takes classroom training,” Powers said.

At the height of the relief operation, 20 Red Cross shelters were operating in the immediate Capital Region counties, plus another five in mid-Hudson Valley counties to the south. That included serving 8,817 snacks or meals and 871 overnight stays throughout the region, Powers said. A total of 355 Red Cross staff and volunteers came from as far as Buffalo and New York City as the power outages continued for several days in many areas.

Utility review

Once utility companies file their assessments of the ice storm response next month, Dalton said the PSC will the review their performance. Although increased tree trimming near power lines has already been a focus for several years, Dalton predicted “electricity customers are likely to be seeing a lot of tree-trimming companies operating in their neighborhoods.”

She noted that a massive ice storm like the December event would have caused widespread problems even with more aggressive tree trimming. Even so, after the storm, the PSC issued a call for utilities to “aggressively pursue tree trimming ... in accordance with standing agreements in order to help reduce the likelihood that customers lose electricity after a major ice, snow, rain or wind storm.”

National Grid spokesman Patrick Stella said the company is on track to fulfill an agreement to spend $1.4 billion over five years, part of a 2006 PCS approval of the merger of National Grid and Keyspan in 2006.

“We have a pretty aggressive tree-trimming program,” Stella said. In addition to trimming in utility rights of way, he said the company also seeks permission from property owners to trim where needed while attempting not to ruin the appearance of trees and to maintain tree health.

National Grid was ordered by the PSC to rebate customers a total of $22 million for failing to meet power reliability standards in 2007 and 2006. Equipment failure was the primary reason, accounting for 26 percent of National Grid interruptions in 2007. Trees were second at 23 percent, according to PSC data.

After the December storm, PSC staff noted that “NYSEG has actually decreased its tree-trimming expenditures over the past five years, which is cause for increased scrutiny of performance and overall environmental management by this utility.”

NYSEG spokesman Clayton Ellis said last week that the company “has an excellent track record of responding to storm emergencies ... [and] a comprehensive tree-trimming program that strikes a balance between aesthetics and enabling use to minimize tree-related power interruptions.”

At the same time, Ellis said that in major storms, trees out of NYSEG’s control can cause outages.

“The bottom line is that ice storms are extremely destructive and no amount of tree trimming would have significantly lessened interruptions,” he said.