O&R Declares "Storm Watch"

Orange and Rockland Utilities announced Thursday afternoon that it has declared a "company-wide Storm Watch" in preparation for the anticipated arrival of Hurricane Irene this weekend.

This includes a mobilization of all available company personnel and keeping additional electric line crews on alert for the weekend.

"We've told folks, 'You're going to be working this weekend, and once you start, you're going to be working until it's done," said Mike Donovan of O&R Media Relations. "This is a pretty big storm. We anticipate heavy weather.

"For this kind of storm, it's very labor-intensive," said Mike Donovan of O&R Media Relations. "There will be a lot of reconstruction going on if the storm progresses the way they think."

Donovan said customers whose power is out can take advantage of wireless electronic devices to access the company's Storm Information Center. This includes an outage map, which shows where the power is out across the O&R service area.

"We're tyring to push folks to the outage map so they have some idea what's going on in the storm," Donovan said. "They can get to it on wireless or a Blackberry. It's something we use a lot in a situation like this. It is refreshed every 15 minutes so it's current.

"It gives you a sense of the dimension of the problem. Is all of Pearl River out or just your street? The estimated restore time is also helpful so you know when the company believes it will be able to repari the problem. That is useful for planning."

O&R is reminding customers that if their power goes out, they should not assume that the company knows. They should call 1-877-434-4100 or use the online Electric Outage Report form.

"When you call to report an outage, for instance, the system reads your telephone number," Donovan said. "If somebody on your street called it in already, they tell you. It's not like the old days where you call and can't get through."

In addition to taking advantage of current technology, Donovan said that O&R is applying lessons learned in previous storms in judging personnel needs. The work can be more extensive than that required in more common outages. He said that they are recruiting additional workers by contacting independent contractors and utility companies outside the path of the storm.

"What we saw in Floyd and Ernesto was a lot of rebuilding of systems rather than just repairs," Donovan said. "It's very labor intensive. The thing that is important for us is to contractors and other utility companies to supplement our work force. That's what we've been doing the last couple of days."

O&R is lining up additional tree-trimming crews and is mobilizing gas department crews to deal with potential flooding.

"There are an enormous number of moving parts to this kind of thing," Donovan said. "We have an on-the-shelf plan. It's the size of the Manhattan phone book.

"What we do after every big storm is have a lessons-learned type of sit down to see what works and what we can do better. You can sit down and game plan stuff until the cows come home, but once you go out, you have to be fluid and make adjustments. The plan is a good platform off which to react."