Community officials outline improved disaster plan

Community officials outline improved disaster plan

By Kimberly Stauffer Friday, 18 September 2009

Fallen trees contribute to area-wide blackouts

More than a year after Hurricane Ike devastated the Houston area, local officials continue to analyze their disaster efforts and prepare for the next major storm, even as they carry out residual repairs.

The category 2 hurricane ripped sheets of metal off skyscrapers and dumped almost 19 inches of rain in areas north of Houston. Thousands of fallen trees exacerbated transportation issues as limbs and foliage clogged neighborhood streets and major roadways, and were a contributor to the largest blackout in Texas history.

With much of the city in the dark, communication through newscasts, internet or even phone was impossible. Francisco Sanchez, public information officer for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management, said with 92 percent of the community without power, the agency struggled to create enough Points of Distribution, decide where to place them and how to inform residents.

“Disasters are controlled chaos,” Sanchez said. “Our job is to anticipate the hazards and overcome them.”

The POD sites were mainly operated by federal and state agencies, Sanchez said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency reported Hurricane Ike required one of the largest supply efforts in the agency’s history, dispensing millions of gallons of water, bags of ice and Meals-Ready-to-Eat in Houston. The operation became a logistical challenge, Sanchez said, with too many involved parties.

“We learned working with [federal and state agencies] that probably local government should have a greater role in that,” he said.

In the new system, the county judge will solely determine where to place PODs.

Local preparations

For the City of Jersey Village, emergency management was well underway long before the hurricane struck.

“We’ve been preparing for this for years,” said Michael Brown, director of parks and recreation for Jersey Village. “We sit down on a yearly basis and do scenarios. We go through it just like an actual event.”

When Hurricane Ike struck the small municipality, government and emergency personnel were prepared to handle the storm and its repercussions.

“I think we did great. The residents here were served well,” said Mike Castro, city manager. “When you talk to emergency managers, a great deal is just preparing in advance. It’s not just from the fiscal and equipment standpoint, but that people are trained and have gone through dry runs. I don’t think the city has been better off than it is right now.”

Castro said officials were preparing for the next hurricane while still hunkered down during Hurricane Ike.

“We were constantly making notes about what we needed to change, needed to fix, what didn’t work so well for us,” he said. “We had meetings beginning in October laying out action plans. A lot had to do with communication with residents, managing community expectations and making sure [residents] take part in their preparations.”

The city taped informational fliers to residents’ doors in the days following the hurricane. When a line in Houston’s water system lost pressure, the notices were the only way for officials to communicate the need to boil water before consumption. The city’s groundwater wells failed as well after the sole generator took a direct lightning hit.

“What we’ve done in the interim is add generators to other sites so multiple generators will now assist [if one generator fails],” Castro said.

The city devised a new method to disseminate information in the event of disaster, Castro said. Officials installed 40 small boxes, designed like real estate brochure boxes, at key intersections where the city can stock informational fliers.

“After every event—Rita, Katrina, Allison—particularly in the last couple of years, we’ve spent a lot of time as a staff critiquing ourselves and getting a little bit better,” Castro said. “When we lost part of the roof to city hall during Ike, we literally set up city hall in eight hours. That’s the kind of preparation we’ve gone through in the last year.

“In a natural disaster a great deal is procedure driven,” Castro said. “Each person in city hall has an assignment. We still get curveballs, but for the most part we can anticipate things we need to do.”

Blackout

Many residents were surprised when their power failed, Sanchez said. They blamed power companies like Centerpoint Energy, responsible for restoring power to 2.15 million customers in the region. Sanchez said the 18-day lapse was in part caused by a busy hurricane season. Hurricanes Dolly and Gustave and Tropical Storm Edouard had made landfall along the Texas coast in the previous three weeks. Centerpoint had already sent support crews to help the affected regions when Hurricane Ike came ashore.

“When our turn came, because of the busy season, folks were already everywhere, already tied up,” Sanchez said.

The storm’s 300-mile-wide wind field affected Centerpoint’s entire 5,000-square-mile service area. Trees knocked down utility poles and more than 300,000 feet of cable, causing 86 percent of the company’s almost 1,500 circuits to flat line. Residents were literally left in the dark about the situation. Leticia Lowe, spokeswoman for Centerpoint Energy, said the company realizes communication is key during and after a disaster.

“We are working to refine our communication efforts, like our website and our ZIP code map, which wasn’t as clear as it could have been,” she said. “We’ve been working hard to remove dead or stressed trees in our easements so they don’t pose a problem in a future storm.”

Lowe said it was not that the tree-trimming program was ineffective, but rather that the company could not prevent 50-foot trees from falling on power lines.

Centerpoint established four staging stations for extra support crews and equipment last year, in addition to the 12 full-time company locations and service centers. The operation worked well until power began returning. As the city resumed, traffic became an issue.

“The 11,000 additional resources that we brought in from the rest of the country had a hard time maneuvering in the city,” Lowe said.

If another storm causes a severe power outage, Lowe said Centerpoint would establish 16 staging sites throughout its service area.

“We do have a very comprehensive emergency plan, but we certainly learned a lot,” Lowe said. “We are ready should anything happen, but customers do need to have their own plans as well. They need to be prepared to be without power.”

Lowe said when the entire service territory loses power at once, people need to understand it will take time to restore.

“We even paid for radio advertising beforehand to warn customers to prepare to be without power for at least two weeks. People said they heard it, but they didn’t think it applied to them,” she said. “We depend so much on electricity for everything we do. We need to have a plan, whether there’s a hurricane or not.”

Lowe said Centerpoint is working with local city officials to identify key facilities, such as police stations, hospitals, sewage pumping stations and water pumping stations that will need power quickly restored.

Many residents became anxious and angry as the restoration efforts became weeks instead of days. Lowe said customers need to understand power companies have a plan.

“There is a systematic way of getting power restored,” she said. “When neighbors across the street started getting power, that caused a level of frustration, but it was not because we didn’t know what we were doing. It’s just like working on a string of Christmas lights. No matter how badly you want the 20th light to turn on, the previous 19 need to turn on first.”