Ineffective emergency management practices at the Lansing Board of Water and Light lengthened the power restoration process following the December ice storm outages by at least two to three days, a team investigating the public utility's response found.
The Community Review Team, headed by Brig. Gen. Michael McDaniel, unveiled their report Monday at Lansing City Hall after more than four months of investigating whether BWL's storm response met industry best practices and writing recommendations for wherever the response fell short.
At the report's release, McDaniel said policy failures at BWL tacked additional days onto the power restoration effort following the Dec. 21 ice storm that left more than 35,000 customers without electricity.
Although it was not one of the shortcomings that lead to the power outage extension, McDaniel said the BWL's lack of record-keeping is "mind boggling."
"As a homeland security and emergency management official, it is mind boggling to me, there's no other word for it," McDaniel said. "I'm still struck by the absolute lack of any records from any time during the ice storm outage. That's just amazing that you would not keep those records."
McDaniel said a contributing factor to the power outage extension was a lack of communication between the city of Lansing and BWL. McDaniel said this lack of communication lasted three days after the storm and it resulted in many overlapping procedures at both the city and BWL.
BWL also neglected to substantially follow through with their vegetation management policy, McDaniel said. The shortcoming resulting in more down power lines and power outages from overgrown branches taking out power lines, according to the report.
McDaniel said that BWL's failure to have a substantial amount of power outage spotters on the ground in a timely fashion contributed to the lengthy power repair process.
In a press release issued after the report's release, BWL General Manager J. Peter Lark said BWL has been implementing improvements on their emergency response, such as increasing the number of line crews and creating an Outage Center and an outage map.
"At first glance, it appears the BWL is already in the process of implementing many of the improvements recommended by the CRT, and those actions will help us become a stronger utility that our customers expect and deserve," Lark said. "Together these actions will ensure that customer communications are improved and outage times shortened."
At the unveiling, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero said he will examine the review and decide on further action required.
"I look forward to reading the report and I can promise you, General, that every word will be taken seriously, every finding will be carefully considered, and every recommendation will be rigorously reviewed," Bernero said.
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