Despite leaving people in the dark about when their power would come back on, Puget Sound Energy did a good job of restoring power after last December’s deadly windstorm, according to an independent study commissioned by the power company.

The December storm, which has since been named the “Hanukkah Eve Windstorm of 2006,” left more than a dozen dead in Western Washington and cut power to roughly 1.5 million people. Many went without power for a week or more.

Puget Sound Energy was heavily criticized for its response to the storm, and later asked for an outside review of its work to restore power.

A special independent analysis prepared for Puget Sound Energy by KEMA, an energy consulting firm, said PSE wasn’t fully prepared to handle a storm as big as the December blast, now considered the fourth worst in Puget Sound history.

PSE spokesman Roger Thompson said the long-awaited KEMA report was unbiased and thorough. PSE did not edit the report, he said.

“They brought us into rooms and asked about what we did as individuals, mistakes we may have made and suggestions for improvements,” he said. “They talked to customers, state regulators, phone operators and line crewmen. It was a totally unfiltered process and we didn’t try to soften any criticisms.”

KEMA presented its report to Puget Sound Energy last month; the analysis was dated July 2 but wasn’t released until Aug. 6.

The much-anticipated report was not immediately released so the company could digest the contents, Thompson said.

The study covered the utility’s logistics and resources, planning and preparation for emergencies, the performance of its crew and management, its communications efforts inside and outside the company, its readiness and its work to control trees that could knock out power lines.

The report was a mixed bag for PSE.

While it repeatedly praised the “truly outstanding” dedication of employees to get power restored after the storm, the analysis also recommended improvements to the company’s emergency plan, PSE’s damage assessment process, and its customer outreach efforts.

The report also noted that PSE has been making changes since the storm — some coming after internal debriefings and some after a review that was ordered by Gov. Christine Gregoire.

The KEMA report sets out 16 areas where the power company has taken action, starting with the tree-trimming efforts on Whidbey Island that are expected to last through late summer.

A storm to remember

The deadly windstorm started the evening of Dec. 14 and stretched into the morning of Dec. 15.

Almost 1.5 million people lost power, including 750,000 PSE customers. All of Whidbey Island lost electricity.

The National Weather Service in Seattle said the storm caused 15 deaths.

Most of those who died made it through the storm itself. Two people were electrocuted by fallen power lines, one person died in a house fire started by a candle, and eight others died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide poisoning was also the cause in the hospitalization of roughly 275 people.

Four people died during the storm; three were killed after being hit by falling trees, and one person drowned.

Although the KEMA report said the time it took PSE and its subcontractor, Potelco, to restore power was “reasonable,” KEMA was blunt when it addressed the utility’s efforts in keeping its customers up-to-date as the power outage continued.

“PSE did not manage the process of providing customer information on restoration times as effectively as needed to meet the needs of its customers,” the report said. “The magnitude of this storm overwhelmed the information systems capability of the company.”

PSE also added stress to the lives of its customers after the storm, the report said, because it didn’t specifically tell people how long their power would be out. That meant residents didn’t have the information they needed to decide if they should ride out the storm at home, go to a relative’s or friend’s home, or stay at a hotel.

And the KEMA analysis said the utility was too vague with the information it did give out.

“While PSE did provide frequent updates during the initial three days of the (power) restoration process, its communications during that period did not use clear language nor provide a specific estimate of the number of days it may take to restore power,” the report said.

“One of the biggest problems was rapid, location-specific restoration times,” Thompson said. “There was a lot of frustration within the company as the situation unfolded and we realized the magnitude of the problem.”

“Our customers were asking themselves, ‘Should I go to a motel or tough it out?’ and our inability to answer them will be a primary focus as we try to get better,” he said.

Problems noted

The report also highlighted differing levels of interest within the power company about its corporate emergency response plan during large scale emergencies.

Called the CERP, the plan is a vital guide for setting out who does what within the utility when the lights go out. Though the KEMA report said the plan was well executed, it also said workers within PSE look at it as “merely corporate bureaucracy.”

That said, the report also noted that PSE adapted quickly to overcoming shortcomings in the CERP. One person or small groups of workers were assigned to specific geographic areas and took the lead on efforts to get the power back on.

The report praised “the overall resilience of all…to adjust to continually changing needs by performing additional roles that they hadn’t previously performed.”

The report said the plan worked well during the first nine storms of 2006, but the December one “was the first extreme event to truly test the emergency plan, and the breakdown of some critical processes was evident.

“While the efforts of personnel often overcame process issues, the need for extra effort indicates that parts of the plan should be reviewed for potential improvement,” the report said.

The report also said that as time passed and pressure increased for the company to restore power, the work of the utility’s emergency operations center became “more ad hoc.”

“Some management directors at the emergency operations center were initiated without knowledge of affected operations bases and personnel in those bases. The directives were apparently intitiated as a response to pressure from external influences that created a sense of urgency among emergency operations center management to take action.”

That said, the report noted that individual employees, small work groups and the utility’s management team rose to meet the challenges posed by the storm.

“The examples of many employees working well above expectations during the restoration are too numerous to catalog within this report.”

Even so, it noted one employee who worked 22 hours straight during the first day of the storm and then volunteered to take calls about the outage for another 12-hour shift. It also mentioned another employee who was on vacation in Hawaii and came home to help, as well as crews that worked 18 hours a day and other employees who volunteered at Red Cross shelters.

More training is needed

The report also stressed more emergency training for workers, however, and said PSE’s response to the storm was limited its number of “damage assessors,” the on-the-ground experts who are critical in directing repairs to get power restored.

The report said PSE’s number of qualified assessors who were ready for the December storm may have been low because less than half – 40 percent – of PSE and Potelco workers showed up for the seven training sessions that had been set up for the 2006 season.

PSE has 40 to 50 trained people who can diagnose a problem in the field and report back. But the December storm revealed the need for many more.

“We need people on the ground, perhaps as many as 250,” Thompson said. “How we go about training that many is one question we have to deal with.”

Thompson disputed the report’s finding that the current training level was inadequate.

“Our people are extremely capable; the problem was we simply didn’t have enough. Maybe an in-house cross-training system might be the answer, and we will certainly be looking hard at that,” he said.

Report rejects underground lines

The report also notes that putting power lines underground won’t prevent power outages and would be costly for customers. Burying power lines became a popular idea in the days after the December storm.

Jeremiah Ray, a Clinton resident, has been a vocal advocate for underground lines.

“It’s all about money. You can’t expect to run a wire through the forest and not expect it to fall down in a big storm,” he said.

“There are always going to be disasters,” said Sharon Emerson of Langley. “They should be undergrounding certain critical areas, like along Bayview Road; there are two senior citizen centers in Langley that should never face power outages.”

The report said putting transmission lines underground could cost $10 million to $20 million per mile, however. Permits and environmental regulations could drive costs even higher.

Although the KEMA report recommends that PSE conduct an expanded review of putting power lines underground, the report also said PSE could make less-costly improvements to increase its reliability in getting electricity to its customers during storms.

Thompson said that over half of PSE’s lines are below the surface.

“If we find the cost to put all lines underground runs a half-billion dollars, will our customers agree to foot the bill? It’s a critical balancing act — making the system impervious would cost more than people are willing to pay,” he said.

The report is clear on the challenges faced by PSE. Many power lines are in danger due to narrow rights of way, tall trees, and political and public opposition to tree cutting.

Thompson said the utility’s efforts on trimming trees — the company spends about $15 million a year on its vegetation management program — is under intense study.

“Very likely we will increase trimming. But in what specific areas do we provide greater clearances, and what will the budget allow?” Thompson said.

Langley Mayor Neil Colburn said trimming back trees, and not burying power lines, was the practical approach.

He had strong words for the report itself. Colburn said the analysis “went overboard” in its repeated references to the size of the storm.

“What stood out to me is they’ve bent over backwards of how unprecedented the event was, and they used that throughout the whole thing,” Colburn said. “It’s obviously a PR piece.”

That’s not to say the report itself is bad, he added.

“I think that they accepted the responsibility for their lack of communication. It seems to me that they do recognize that that was a serious problem,” Colburn said.

PSE spent roughly $3.5 million to make repairs to its power system on Whidbey Island. Across the region, the utility’s repair bill was between $60 million to $80 million.

A total of $220 million in property damage claims were filed in the Northwest after the December storm.

Colburn said some business owners are still trying to overcome their losses from the storm.

He said his restaurant, the Clover Patch Cafe, was closed for 10 days and his losses were substantial.

“I’ve cut back on advertising; I’ve raised my prices. We lost probably close to somewhere between $20,000 to $25,000 of revenue,” he said.

“They say it ranks up there as the fourth worst storm in memory. In terms of power, from their perspective, I would say that it’s the worse storm,” he added. “I’ve lived here for 31 years and I don’t ever remember it for being out that long.”