A.G. Gancarski
The post-Matthew blame game has started in Jacksonville, as the initial rush of emergency preparation has devolved into finger-pointing and excoriation.
At the center of the storm is the local utility, which was criticized heavily during Tuesday’s meeting of the Jacksonville City Council for sewage spills and restoration timeframes that turned out to be fictional.
Council members, to a person, lauded the crews doing the work, while castigating the management of the whole process.
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Paul McElroy, CEO of JEA, spoke about the municipal utility’s emergency recovery plan, which includes assessing what is needed in terms of inventory and supplies relative to post-disaster restoration.
McElroy described the “long grind” of restoring power to 210,000 customers over the last 84 hours, adding that “we couldn’t do this alone,” crediting outside utility companies, the mayor, and Gov. Rick Scott for material assistance.
JEA anticipates $30 million of needed recovery costs, much of that from tree damage; it is McElroy’s hope that much of that can be made up through reimbursement.
McElroy described the priority list for power restoration: hospitals, public safety access, and schools serving as shelters take priority. From there, government offices and downtown campuses, and schools, which generally sit in population centers.
JEA intends to keep its extra crews and its tree removal crews, which add up to 540 people devoted to removing wire, cutting up trees, and removing debris.
Of course, there are costs associated with that work, including lodging, food, and transport.
Regarding the 70 or so “sanitary overflows,” McElroy said that “we’re back in control,” with the systemic incontinence resolved.
“As with our customers, we lost power,” McElroy said, estimating that 60 percent of customers lost power.
With 1,400 sewer pump systems, about half losing power, and parts of the system underwater, a “challenge” was “posed” for the utility.
McElroy said of sanitary overflows that “72 in a three-day period is extraordinarily bad.”
This explanation didn’t mollify council members, who peppered McElroy with questions about how these failures could happen.
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Councilman Matt Schellenberg unloaded on McElroy for “overpromising and underdelivering” in terms of the time of power restoration, which was promised to be completed Monday night … a fateful failure for the utility.
“What should I tell my constituents,” Schellenberg said, regarding when the power would be restored.
“How did the Monday at 11:59 come out and how could you be so wrong?”
McElroy said “we blew it,” saying that “we accelerated where we thought we could be in terms of performance,” with “four times the normal workforce” on restoration.
McElroy couldn’t make any guarantees as to when full restoration would be completed.
“As the outages go down,” McElroy said, “we’re going to hold these resources” and see if other resources can be brought in toward “full restoration.”
One issue: the “heavy wind event” created issues with overhead lines, said McElroy.
Councilman John Crescimbeni lambasted McElroy for the “Monday at 11:59” promise, wanting to know why it was made.
McElroy said the goal was set on Sunday, adding that there was no media push to get that information out.
“I saw way too much destruction,” Crescimbeni said, to make that claim credible.
Crescimbeni wants a full report on the process of storm reaction and recovery.
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Call center waits came under fire, with McElroy claiming some calls were answered in 15 seconds.
Councilman Jim Love, incredulous, said that couldn’t have been the case during the storm, and suggested that outsourcing the call center may be a move going forward.
Councilwoman Joyce Morgan noted that in one affected Arlington neighborhood, “everybody’s getting something different from the call center” and while “nobody has power, everybody’s being told different things,” the lack of trust between the community and the utility was exacerbated.
“Your guys have really been working,” Morgan said.
McElroy noted the workers are doing 16- or 17-hour shifts, working, getting fed, getting rest, and coming back for more.
Councilman Al Ferraro, whose district has major power restoration deficits, wanted to know how timetables were set.
“Residents were coming out, and kind of taking it out” on the line workers, Ferraro said, as “neighbors were coming out and stopping [crews] in their tracks.”
“The people who give these deadlines of time, do they just stay in the building,” Ferraro wondered. “Moving forward, if the people who actually do the work can give some input …”
“My area has just been devastated,” Ferraro said.
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Council President Lori Boyer took issue with the imprecision of the outage map, saying that people didn’t know how long they’d be out of power, and couldn’t make reasonable judgments about decisions to get hotel rooms, Red Cross assistance, and so on.
“Anything that you can communicate in that regard,” Boyer said, “would be extremely helpful.”
McElroy said that the outage map was “an emerging technology … an art and a science.”
