Georgia Power quick to respond By Matthew C. Quinn, Georgia Power Co. President David Ratcliffe got a wakeup call that this was not your run-of-the-mill winter storm at 3 a.m. Sunday when the power went off in his Buckhead home.

"We were all out," Ratcliffe said of the utility's top executives Monday as he oversaw the storm recovery effort, estimated to cost more than $10 million.

Once he realized the magnitude of the problem, Ratcliffe drove to the utility's headquarters on Ralph McGill Boulevard to offer encouragement to the crisis management team already in place in the utility's storm center.

Georgia Power employees were put on standby late last week, but weather reports did not predict such a large ice storm, which ended up knocking out power to 340,000 of the 1.8 million homes and businesses served by the utility.

Once that became clear, a team of 20 crisis managers began a marathon recovery effort following a plan that has been tried, tested and tweaked over decades. The decision was made at 4:30 a.m. to mobilize extra line crews from Southern Co. sister utilities Savannah Power and Alabama Power and to call in outside contractors.

About 1,500 line workers were brought in to supplement Georgia Power's usual complement of 500.

More than 100 workers were deployed at Georgia's Power's customer service center in Henry County to answer calls from customers, many of them angry. There were more than 300,000 calls on Sunday.

The storm center doubled as the center for the crisis that never came for the Y2K transition on New Year's Eve. Workers only Monday took down the red Y2K Center banners.

The round-the-clock nerve center acts as a clearinghouse for information for 17 operations centers across the state, 10 of them affected bythis week's ice storm.

Clusters of people work on such tasks as arranging for forestry contractors to remove fallen trees from power lines, deploying line crews and procuring equipment. One group makes sure out-of-state line workers are allowed by police to go where they need to go.

Then there are logistics such as arranging hotel rooms and meals for line crews that are working 18-hour days.

At 10 a.m. Monday, 102,489 Georgia Power customers were still without power. By 5 p.m, the number had been reduced to 75,000. Details of just which lines get fixed first are up to local operations centers. But the policy is to make repairs first that will restore power to the maximum numbers of customers.

"We try to put the most people on the quickest," said Larry Woelfl, a Georgia Power manpower director.

Priority call directors are posted in each operations center to take calls from local police, medical and fire officials to direct personnel to homes and businesses where health and safety are at risk.

The pace of repairs slowed late Monday as the largest groups of customers were restored. Some customers may not be back on line until Wednesday, Georgia Power said. "We're going house to house and house and it's slow going," said spokesman Tal Wright.

Neighborhoods with the largest number of trees, such as Decatur, Druid Hills and Buckhead, tend to be in this category.

That includes the homes of utility executives, and the Governor's Mansion, which was without power Sunday night.

"The trees don't play favorites," said Woelfl.

-- boop (leafyspurge@hotmail.com), January 26, 2000

Answers

Hmmm.....

I can tell you that when we've had crisis situations at our utility, the last thing we wanted to see was the company president showing up "to give us encouragement". Bring donuts maybe, but that's it.

Jim

-- Jim Cooke (JJCooke@yahoo.com), January 26, 2000.

Then there are logistics such as arranging hotel rooms and meals for line crews that are working 18-hour days.

The real problem was to find rooms with heat.

-- (4@5.6), January 26, 2000.

--we're still "out" up here in north georgia. grid power went "South" (hehehehe) last sat night, still out this morning. I WONDER if the gov mansion and those georgia power executives homes have backup generators? I noticed that there was no reference in the story, but anyone want to bet a nickel thaey DON'T have genny's? ---one of my biggest goals is to get 1000% off the grid completely, and this latest snafu just reinforces that position for me. we have another storm coming in now, most likely stay out of power for a long time here. Thank God for solar, and the foresight to have it!

Just say NO to centralized power. It's worked for 100 years, cool, but folks need to know that generating your own is quite doable now, the technology is here, there's something that will work for all situations, and as soon as banks get hip and will include complete alternate energy rigs right along with a mortgage we can become energy independent as a nation again, and cause hundreds of thousands of new all-in-the-US jobs, top to bottom vertically. AND cut down on air pollution, sending precious dollars overseas to ultra billionaire jet setting slave masters, and other assorted dictators. that's where your oil export money goes, it supports the huge international companies that are part of this NWO deal, if you follow the money. Ya, ya, we generate a lot with coal here-well phooie on coal, too, it gives off more radiation than the nuke plants, and most folks don't know that. You DON'T have to keep giving those fatcats your money forever. Please give some thought to supporting the independent alternative energy companies around the country, they were there for you pre-y2k, and they are still there. they need your business, you need the juice, the planet needs to clean up, and we need to decentralize power for security and safety reasons, too. When one tree limb can knock out juice for thousands of homes, well, there's something basically wrong there. having your power out during a cold snap can be potenially life threatening, and the big power companies will NEVER admit that centralized power's time has come and now it's time to MOVE ON. They just want that check from you every month, bottom line. You now have choices. 'They" no longer have monopoly status, look around it's doable. All it takes is getting mad enough to say "OK" I'm gonna do it!" then do the research for what will work for your situation and GO FOR IT!

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), January 26, 2000.

Go Zog! Nothin' like a strawbale home(R60 insulation!)and a solar energy pack! My goal in life.

-- Just Curious (jnmpow@flash.net), January 26, 2000.

jim, i think it was appropriate and the "right thing to do" for the boss to show up. guess it depends on what kind of boss you have. when i worked in loma linda on a 9th floor and there was a major earthquake a few years back our "boss" came up just to give us some moral support even though we were still having many, and some fairly sizeable, aftershocks. everyone on the unit really appreciated it.

-- boop (leafyspurge@hotmail.com), January 26, 2000.

Zog - For coal to give off radiation it would have to be an unstable isotope (or contain an unstable isotope) which decomposes into a more stable form (e.g. uranium into lead). Please explain what unstable isotopes are affilliated with coal and what they decompose into. Thanks.

-- Die Fledermaus (shadow@alliance.org), January 26, 2000.

Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash: Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance (United States Geological Survey)

Figure 4 indicates that the contribution from coal is small compared with othr sources of radiation.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 26, 2000.

"The radiation hazard from airborne emissions of coal-fired power plants was evaluated in a series of studies conducted from 19751985. These studies concluded that the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment. For the average citizen, the radiation dose from coal burning is considerably less." (Source: USGS)

Thank you, Tom. I found the rest of the paper to be interesting and informative, as well.

-- Die Fledermaus (shadow@alliance.org), January 26, 2000.