With Storm Plans in Place and Crews and Materials at the Ready, utilities located near the Gulf of Mexico had to wait until the brunt of Hurricane Ike had passed before springing into action. Most of the population also was hunkered down, as elected officials put it, but by 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 13, the utilities had crews in the field assessing damage and restoring power.

Mike Maxwell, CenterPoint Energy's senior service consultant for the Galveston, Texas, service center, provided this detail at ground zero: "The first outages occurred a little before 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12, as winds and rain picked up on Galveston Island. As the hurricane got closer, flooding increased and the power outages became more numerous until the entire island was out."

Doug White, CenterPoint Energy's emergency operating plan coordinator, explained, "CenterPoint pulled the trigger on Thursday [Sept. 11] to get mutual-assistance crews heading to Houston. Five days prior to Ike making landfall, we started making preparations, and two days later, activated our emergency operating plan."

Waiting until the storm hit was not an option. "Setting up the infrastructure is the key to success," White said. "At CenterPoint Energy, storm preparation is a year-round job with simulations and drills of storm-related scenarios."

Once the storm moved out of the area, roughly 12,000 line mechanics, tree trimmers and other skilled professionals began arriving in Houston, Texas, to rebuild CenterPoint Energy's electric distribution system. These mutual-assistance workers represented more than 70 companies from 30 states and Canada, along with approximately 3300 CenterPoint employees who were committed to the restoration effort.

Initially, CenterPoint Energy established four staging areas around the region to speed the deployment of these power line workers to the job site each day. The number of staging areas grew to 11 as the restoration effort took shape. These staging areas provided a base of operations near the work. Line and tree-trimming crews were provided with security, hot meals, showers, fuel for their vehicles (gas/diesel), maps to work sites and a well-stocked line of supplies. No one part of the effort was more important than any other, but the crews on the front lines needed the supply chain and support personnel to keep moving forward.

SUPPLIERS TAKE STOCK

"During hurricane season, CenterPoint Energy stocks enough hardware, poles, conductor, transformers and other materials needed to supply our forces and incoming crews until the materials ordered from manufacturers begin to arrive," noted Kenny Mercado, CenterPoint Energy's division senior vice president of electric operations. "Another key element in being prepared is having alliances with manufacturers and suppliers. CenterPoint partners with Thomas & Betts for transmission structures, Southwire for conductor, Central Maloney for distribution transformers and Thomasson Lumber Co. for wood poles. These manufacturers and many others kept the material flowing."

Southwire reported that its first truckload of conductor left the plant on Sept. 11, two days prior to Ike's landfall. The company continued shipping conductor daily until the end of September. In that time, Southwire shipped 8,856,291 ft of conductor.

A massive CenterPoint staging area was set up at the Sam Houston Race Park, located in northern Houston. Scott Doyle, a CenterPoint Energy site manager, commented about the massive deployment: "Approximately 1000 line workers and 2000 tree trimmers came to Sam Houston every morning in roughly 30 buses. In addition, a couple of hundred CenterPoint Energy employees were assigned to the staging area to mutual-assistance crews."

ALLIANCE PARTNERS HANG TOUGH

CenterPoint Energy has an alliance with Thomas & Betts to supply steel structures. But fortunately, the steel structures in the CenterPoint bulk transmission system sustained essentially no damage, enabling Thomas & Betts to focus its efforts on other regions of the Gulf.

Steve Shephard, plant manager for Thomas & Betts' Houston facility, knows how important alliances can be. But key alliances are also formed between manufacturers and their suppliers. Shephard's facility was manufacturing 500-kV tubular structures for Entergy and miscellaneous items for CenterPoint Energy when Ike knocked out power to the steel-pole facility. One of its alliance partners, SSAB, stepped in and donated 1000 gallons of diesel to fuel an emergency generator. SSAB also heard about the plight of one of Shephard's employees whose home was without power. On family member has serious heart problems and was hooked up to medical devices, so SSAB loaned the family a portable generator that allowed them to remain at home. Alliances are key to business, but they are more than that. Alliances are also about developing and maintaining relationships.

One supplier, Hubbell Power Systems, celebrated the 10th anniversary of its distribution center, and then found itself immersed in the massive restoration efforts by dispatching from this center when Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike battered the coastal United Sates. Gustav slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi. Less than a week later, Hanna hit the Eastern Seaboard. Not quite a week later, Ike plowed into Texas and Louisiana. This really challenged the supply chain. Hubbell estimates that it shipped almost 2.5 million connectors, fittings and hardware, roughly 195,000 cutouts and fuse links, about 78,000 insulators and arresters, more than 33,000 anchors, fiberglass construction products and overhead switches, and nearly 10,000 tools to the storm-ravaged areas.

Another major supplier, S&C Electric shipped an additional 23,000 cutouts and 228,000 fuse links to utilities impacted by Ike. To meet the need, S&C ramped up assembly in links from two lines to four lines and opened additional cutout assembly areas. Factory workers pitched in, too, going to 11.5-hour shifts plus Saturdays and Sundays for more than a month.

Some crews came directly to Texas from working Hurricane Gustav. Henkels & McCoy crews headed out on Aug. 31 in response to Gustav. They sent more than 200 employees and 190 pieces of equipment to storm-damaged areas. Before they headed home near the end of September, they had worked with six different utilities in seven states. They slept in church camps and state parks in the Canton, Mississippi, area. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the only accommodations were box trailers with bunks three high running along the walls of the trailer. In New Caney, Texas, they slept in their trucks or tents. They replaced large numbers of broken poles and crossarms and damaged transformers. They repaired or replaced mile after mile of distribution circuits.

Other crews were local. Duke Austin, president of Houston Pole Line, a Quanta company, said that 1000 workers are headquartered in the area to serve Texas utilities, including alliance partner CenterPoint. When Gustav and Ike hit, Quanta sent in an additional 2000 line workers at the height of the rebuild. "Our Texas team acted as a go-between to assist incoming crews to get up to speed with local utility work practices," Austin said.