Inland Hurricane

By Brian Lacy

I’m a bit of a weather junky and like to think I’m a decent armchair meteorologist, but several weeks ago we experienced a weather event I had never heard of. NBC-13 chief meteorologist Jason Simpson — a proud graduate of Holly Pond High School — referred to the storm system that swept across the state on Friday, March 3, as an inland hurricane. The storm system was fast, passing any given location within 10 to 15 minutes, but the 60-mile-an-hour winds and torrential rain provided a glimpse of the power of a hurricane.

Because the storm came and went so quickly, I was not prepared for how extensive the damage was. This was the most severe weather event Cullman Electric has experienced since the tornado outbreak of April 27, 2011, and in many ways the damage it caused was even worse. On that day 12 years ago, I could look at the co-op’s outage map and follow the path of the F4 tornado from Smith Lake to Fairview. The damage to the co-op’s power lines was intense, but concentrated in those areas where the tornado touched down.

The March 2023 inland hurricane was felt all across Cullman EC’s service area, proving to be one of the biggest challenges as our linemen and operations team set about restoring power to more than 20,000 members by addressing 300 separate outages. Within each of those power outages, crews often had to work multiple service tickets for right-of-way cleanup, broken poles and broken or downed lines that needed to be replaced.

Cullman Electric’s linemen do amazing work in difficult situations, but the sheer volume of construction needing to be done meant we had to bring in outside help. With assistance from Cullman Power Board, Coosa Valley EC, Marshall Dekalb EC and dozens of contractors, we were able to complete repairs needed in 72 hours. This amount of work under normal conditions typically takes weeks.

As a communicator, I’m not involved in the decision-making by our operation’s team. But I do have a front-row seat inside the emergency operations center to see what’s happening and help explain it to the public.

Here are a few things I picked up on while watching our team work.

Every outage event is unique, and when a major storm causes widespread damage to our system there are lots of factors that determine where to start, where to go next and how to get all of the work done. Those decisions are constantly being evaluated and modified as new information is received. That’s one of the reasons we don’t provide restoration time estimates for specific locations.

As a general rule, the most efficient way to restore power to everyone is to address the largest outages first. One problem inside a substation can impact thousands of members. Main distribution lines serve hundreds of homes and businesses. Lines running down a neighborhood street serve a handful of homes. In a major outage, our team works to identify and prioritize the outages that are impacting the most people. Once those repairs are made and power restored, smaller outages impacting a neighborhood or even just a home are often revealed. Those small or individual outages would not have power restored if the bigger issues have not been resolved first.

We can always do better. In the 12 years since our last major event, we’ve enhanced our outage management technology, improved our communication outlets and modified our processes for disaster response. We’ve also had a lot of personnel changes, and those new employees — or veteran employees in new positions — just experienced their first major power restoration event. By the time you read this, Cullman Electric employees will have conducted a formal review of this event to determine what parts of our emergency response went as planned, what issues caught us by surprise and how we can be better prepared for the next time. And while we hope the next time won’t be anytime soon, we know that day will come, and when it does Cullman Electric will be ready.

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