Testimony of
Jay L. Johnson
President and CEO, Dominion Delivery
to the
House Committee on Government Reform
October 3, 2003
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Committee.
My name is Jay Johnson, and I am the president
and CEO of Dominion Virginia Power. My company provides electric service to
about 2.2 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina.
I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before
this committee to discuss Dominion's preparations for and response to Hurricane
Isabel. The implications for future emergency preparedness in the metro-D.C.
area are many, and I commend the Committee for taking up this matter in such
a swift and timely fashion.
Isabel's Impact
Hurricane Isabel was the most devastating natural
disaster in Dominion's 100-year history. The storm blew through Virginia on
September 18, bringing hurricane-force gusts ranging from 74 to 107 miles per
hour. Weather stations clocked sustained tropical storm-force winds from 44
to 69 miles per hour over what the National Weather Service described as "an
unusually extensive area."
The huge storm system covered an area the size
of Colorado. One weather expert called it "a storm of historic proportions."
In its official report on the hurricane, the National Weather Service said Isabel
had brought "permanent change to the landscape" in Virginia from fallen
trees and storm surges.
Throughout most of Dominion's service territory,
the winds bombarded homes, businesses and our distribution facilities with falling
trees and limbs. Soil saturated from recent record rainfall made trees with
root systems already weakened by drought much more susceptible to winds.
As Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels
recently put it, Isabel wreaked havoc on "the forest of urban and suburban
trees... Many of them are so big that, when blown over by tropical-storm force
winds, they're likely to find a power line that was once thought safely distant."
Although Dominion's tree trimming expenses rose
by more than 50 percent over the last four years to $30 million, no amount of
cutting could prevent the massive destruction wrought by a violent storm such
as Isabel.
The hurricane affected about 96 percent of Dominion's
customers in eastern Virginia, 95 percent in central Virginia and 69 percent
in Northern Virginia. At the peak of the storm, 1.8 million of the company's
2.2 million customers in Virginia and northeastern North Carolina lost power.
In much of central and eastern Virginia, the
damage was catastrophic. The damage was less severe but still very significant
in most of Northern Virginia. For example, 16 area water pumping and treatment
stations lost power, as did 91 schools across Northern Virginia—about one
in four.
The good news is that no hospitals in Northern
Virginia were affected. Other important facilities, including the Pentagon,
Fort Belvoir, Dulles and Reagan airports, and the Metro system, did not lose
power.
Throughout our two-state service area, more than
10,700 power poles were destroyed, and 14,600 pole cross arms were broken. About
13,000 spans of wire had to be re-strung, and 7,900 transformers replaced. We
are still counting the damage.
More than 60 percent of our primary distribution
circuits were affected, causing service disruptions to more than 80 percent
of our customers. These circuits deliver power to the lower-voltage circuits
that serve homes and businesses. They had to be repaired before service to the
lower-voltage circuits could be restored.
The cost of the restoration will be significant.
To repair and rebuild facilities, we had to acquire enormous amounts of supplies.
We used a year's supply of poles, cross arms and transformers in just 10 days.
We are nearing four years' worth of usage of some other materials, such as secondary
wire and insulators. This presented a daunting logistical challenge, but we
got the material we needed to complete work without interruption.
The operations and maintenance costs we incurred
while restoring service will not result in higher bills for our Virginia customers.
The 1999 Virginia Electric Utility Restructuring Act caps our base rates through
mid-2007.
Preparations for Isabel
Isabel's scope and impact were unprecedented,
as were Dominion's preparations and response.
We began preparing for Isabel well before it
arrived in Virginia. As the hurricane moved through the western Atlantic Ocean,
meteorologists determined the enormous storm was likely to strike our service
area and cause extensive damage.
We initially mobilized a workforce of 7,000 to
deal with the anticipated outages. Repair crews were placed at staging areas
in central, eastern and Northern Virginia so they could respond quickly to storm
damage. The company also secured the supplies needed for massive service restoration,
including poles, cross arms, transformers and wire.
On the communications front, we issued several
news releases before the storm arrived to warn customers to expect lengthy outages
because of Isabel's expected impact. On Sept. 17, we began airing radio ads
in central and eastern Virginia, urging customers to prepare for the worst.
We even contacted 10,000 customers with special medical needs and suggested
they make alternative arrangements due to the anticipated outages.
We also set up extensive contacts with all levels
of government. In advance of the storm, we briefed officials on our prognosis
for the hurricane - which we expected to be severe—and our preparations
for it. We also provided Dominion contacts for all officials.
Regional storm centers set up by the company
also interfaced with all local Emergency Operations Centers through special
telephone lines. This expedited the exchange of critical storm-related information.
In addition to media outlets and Dominion's customer
call centers, we used Dominion's web site (www.dom.com) as a crisis communications
tool. We set up links to emergency information, provided hurricane preparedness
tips and posted the company's news releases as they were issued.
Response to Isabel: Manpower and Materials
Responding to the storm's devastation, Dominion
immediately increased the size of its work force to more than 12,000 people.
We set ambitious public restoration targets to bring the lights back on across
the Commonwealth, and we achieved those targets.
Our assembled workforce was by far the largest
in Dominion's history. It included more than 9,000 tree and line workers from
Dominion and 18 utilities and 21 contractors as far away as Quebec and Oklahoma.
We are very grateful for their help. We are proud of their selfless and heroic
efforts, both in the field and in support roles.
We initially assigned the highest priority to
restoring service to critical public health and safety facilities, such as hospitals,
water pumping and treatment stations, 9-1-1 services, fire stations and the
like.
Recognizing the crucial importance of Northern
Virginia's water supply, we also sent Dominion personnel to work on site with
our colleagues at the DC Water Authority and the Fairfax County Water Authority
soon after the storm hit.
We restored 14 of the area's 16 pumping stations
on Friday, September 19—the day we began our restoration effort. The other
two, located at Occoquan, suffered major damage to the electrical infrastructure.
One was restored on Sept. 23, the other one on Sept. 26.
We made significant progress quickly with other
critical public health and safety facilities as well.
No hospitals in Northern Virginia were affected.
Other critical facilities in this region, including the Pentagon, Fort Belvoir,
Dulles and Reagan airports, and the Metro system did not lose power.
With the critical facilities returned to service,
we continued to turn our attention to the primary delivery circuits affecting
homes and businesses. Crews reported significant levels of devastation, with
mangled and twisted power poles and wires. Some areas were virtually impenetrable,
due to masses of fallen trees and limbs.
The pace of restoration was somewhat faster in
Northern Virginia, since our facilities in this area generally incurred less
damage. But the task of reconnecting customers was difficult and time consuming
virtually everywhere.
Despite significant obstacles, we were able to
meet or exceed the restoration timetable we set for ourselves every step of
the way.
Of the approximately 485,000 customers affected
by the storm in Northern Virginia, more than 60 percent were restored by Friday,
Sept. 19. By Monday, Sept. 22, three days after restoration work began, fully
89 percent had their power back on. By Friday, Sept. 26, almost all 485,000
Northern Virginia customers had power.
And I'm very pleased to say that as of today,
Friday, October 3, virtually all of Dominion's customers system-wide now have
electric service.
Response to Isabel: Proactive Communications
In addition to the physical work of setting poles
and pulling wire, we implemented a comprehensive and proactive public communications
plan. Providing up-to-date information to government officials and the public
was a priority before, during and after the hurricane.
From the outset, we were very clear about our
restoration priorities. And we repeatedly stressed two things in our radio,
print and electronic communications to customers:
One, the importance of safety around downed power lines
and the proper use of generators;
And two, the inescapable fact that the restoration effort
would more closely resemble a marathon than a sprint, due to the extent of
damages suffered.
In the days following the storm, Dominion representatives
engaged in regular dialogue with the public officials and local Emergency Operations
Centers they contacted before September 18. They were informed of the storm's
devastating impact on the electrical system and given preliminary assessments
of the damages in their areas, which in many cases were catastrophic.
We announced that the storm had disrupted service
to 1.8 million customers - a record outage for Dominion - eclipsing the 1.1
million customers out during Hurricane Fran in 1996.
We assured the officials that we would work around
the clock to restore power safely. We identified for them our top restoration
priorities, as I described earlier. Dominion representatives provided restoration
updates and answered any questions they had about the storm and our response
to it.
Members of the company's management team participated
in daily conference calls with the Virginia Emergency Operations Center to discuss
the status of the restoration efforts.
Company officers held daily news conferences
with the media to keep them abreast of the latest developments.
Dominion bought radio time daily in all markets
to relay critical messages to officials and customers. These messages emphasized
safety and the status of the response effort and expected progress.
We continued to use the Internet to post valuable
information for all users, including
emergency shelter locations, directions and contact information;
dry ice distribution plans and locations;
work plans for electric restoration by community and date;
damage assessments; and
system maps and related outage information.
One indication of the Internet's value as a crisis
communications tool was the number of visitors who went to dom.com between Sept.
18-28. During that 10-day period, we experienced more than 575,000 visits to
our site. That's more than four times the number of visits received in a comparable
stretch of time during the month of August.
Building On Our Success
By and large, we believe our efforts to keep
local authorities and the public informed were quite successful. That said,
I assure you that we have embedded in Dominion's corporate culture a mindset
grounded in continuous improvement. Consistent with that outlook, once we complete
all aspects of the restoration effort, we're going to take a hard look at everything
we did—leading up to, during and after the storm.
We will conduct a thorough assessment of our
planning, implementation, materials management, and communications. The implications
for regional emergency preparedness will emerge more clearly as we examine the
entire Isabel experience with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight.
We are committed to partnering with all levels
of government and all types of emergency agencies to address their concerns
as part of any ongoing assessment of the region's emergency preparedness.
As I stated earlier, Isabel's scope and impact
were unprecedented—and so were Dominion's preparations and response.
The 12,000-member team we assembled in response
to this historic storm was the largest Dominion has ever fielded. These men
and women—some Virginians, some from other states, some from Canada—performed
extraordinarily well under adverse conditions. We are very proud of them.
We are also grateful to the many Dominion customers
who shared a kind word with our crews or gave them a "thumb's up"
as they worked hard to restore electric service as quickly and safely as possible.
We value our customers' support, and we appreciate their patience and understanding.
The British statesman and author, Benjamin Disraeli,
once said: "There is no education like adversity."
Isabel was a harsh teacher. She brought many
hardships to the area. We intend to learn from her presence here—and build
on our success to achieve even greater preparedness in the future.
That concludes my prepared remarks, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this Committee.
I stand ready to answer any questions you may have.
