The Hurricane of 1938 returned to New Hampshire on Tuesday, leaving the state without power for days, forcing the entire Seacoast to evacuate and turning Concord’s Bektash Shriners function hall into a dining room for out-of-town linemen.
Wait – you didn’t know that? You must not have spent the day at Unitil’s headquarters in Hampton, where scores of people participated in the utility’s semiannual emergency drill. The drill pretended that a massive Category 3 hurricane (named Fiona, for some reason) hit New England and went inland, just as the infamous Hurricane of ‘38 did.
Creating imaginary disasters is old hat for utilities like Unitil. “Last year, we blasted a tornado through Fitchburg,” said Rich Francazio, incident commander, as he gazed over one of several operations rooms as Tuesday’s drill got going.
The dining room was full of people working on laptops, talking on phones and watching a wall-sized screen showing updates of the hurricane blasting through its three electric service areas in the region: Concord and a clump of surrounding towns; about half of the Seacoast, and a portion of Massachusetts just below Nashua.
The drill juggled many aspects of public safety and disaster recovery. That included finding places to store electric poles to replace those snapped by hurricane winds; lining up enough hotel rooms available for crews coming in from as far away as California, with backup rooms in case hotels in Hampton became flooded, plus places for them to eat, including the Bektash Temple. It also included bringing in massive 5-megawatt mobile generators to help bypass downed systems and prioritizing repairs for high-priority sites like hospitals. (Among the highest-priority sites is Seabrook Station nuclear power plant, which has a special electrical system.)
But this is the 21st century, so there were some novel problems in the scenario – starting with a “ransomware” attack via phishing, in which employees who clicked on a link in a suspicious email saw their computers taken over by pretend bad guys. That’s not something they had to worry about during the 1938 hurricane.
There was another modern twist with the first civilian “casualty,” in which a person was electrocuted after touching a metal fence connected to a downed wire while trying to take a smart phone picture to share on social media.
“We talked about this, whether we would ask people to take pictures, to show damage,” said Carol Valianti, vice president of communications for Unitil.
Such crowdsourcing is a great way to quickly gather far-flung information, exactly what is needed when a big emergency hits, but concern about safety led the company to be cautious, Valianti said. During the first, “public safety” portion of a response, Unitil will continue its long-standing policy of urging people to stay indoors, off roads and away from potential danger; only after the situation is secure will it encourage photo-sharing.
Using social media, getting information out through Twitter and Facebook, as well as press releases and public service announcements, is increasingly important in emergencies.
This drill was particularly difficult because New England almost never sees hurricanes of such severity, with winds over 100 mph, a foot of rain and coastal storm surges more than a story high.
But Superstorm Sandy was Category 3, and its death toll of almost 250 people and damage tally of at least $75 billion around New York City was an eye-opener for the Northeast. One of the new things in Unitil’s test was incorporating the new National Response Event system organized by the nation’s utilities in the wake of Sandy, which provides a more national oversight of regional emergency response for problems of this magnitude.
Another difference? Both Unitil’s electric and natural gas components were involved because such a hurricane would devastate them both.
“Typically, gas and electric don’t have problems at the same time,” said Tom Meissner, chief operating officer. Ice storms, for example, clobber power lines but rarely affect gas operations, whereas heavy snow isn’t much of a problem for electric components but can bury gas meters and lead to dangerous leaks.
Also, restoration is very difficult between the two: An entire neighborhood can get its electricity restored simultaneously once lines are repaired, but natural gas has to be restored customer by customer even when everything is back to normal.
Tuesday’s drill was going strong by 8 a.m. The equivalent of the Wizard of Oz operating behind the curtain was Jacklyn Ulban, emergency planning coordinator, who sent out notices and updates about what was happening to teams throughout the building and in offices in Concord and Portsmouth and Massachusetts. Responses and actions were catalogued for later analysis.
“I get to throw all the curves at them,” she said.
Staffers from all aspects of Unitil operations were present, including many with office jobs that would be idled during a hurricane, who were operating in their secondary, “storm assignment” job.
One was Fred Nadeau, an accountant, whose storm assignment is emergency logistics – in this case, ensuring there is housing for the hundreds of extra line, tree and damage assessment crews who would respond to the area to help.
“We’ve been gathering blocks of hotel rooms, getting them ready. I track rooms, know which ones are available or not available. . . . We’ve done this with hotels many times. They know what we want, but we have to make sure it’s (ready),” Nadeau said.
The drill lasted through the late afternoon. Staff will be analyzing what happened, looking for problems or things that need to be addressed. And if a Category 3 hurricane does hit, there will be a lot to address.
“This wouldn’t be a restoration. It would be a rebuild,” said Alec O’Meara, Unitil spokesman.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313, dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
