Hurricane Ian and the Sanibel Island Power Grid Rebuild

Mutual Aid: A Core Value of the Electric Business

One of the beauties of the power and utilities industry is the eagerness to help fellow electric co-ops and utilities in times of need. Restoring power to customers is inherently built into the electric industry psyche, which directly translates into the overwhelming willingness to travel across the country or state to assist in restoration efforts. This is called mutual aid.

My career has been spent consulting for public power utilities, electric co-ops, and investor-owned utilities. Part of that work is teaching critical accounting and business processes to utilities to effectively manage storm events. This involves setting up accounting systems to financially manage the mutual aid process. One of the major projects we executed was helping the public power utility on Long Island manage the highly-complex process after Hurricane Sandy.

We're Off to Florida!

I'm not a native Floridian but our family has been going to Sanibel and Captiva Islands since 1998 — staying at condos and houses, frequenting restaurants, shops, the beach, biking, enjoying nature, the Ding Darling preserve, and everything offered by the unique experiences available. In May 2022, we fulfilled a long-term dream and purchased a house on Sanibel Island.

The Perspective of Hurricanes to a Florida Newbie

I'm originally from the upper Midwest. The upper Midwest has crippling snow and the occasional tornado. Snow is easy — stay home if possible, and shovel or plow when it's over. Tornados happen infrequently, but when they do, there is little time to prepare, only to seek shelter and hope.

Hurricanes are fundamentally different. There seems to be at least a week of agonizing watching and worrying about a hurricane's landfall. There's something strange about cheering for a hurricane to miss your location, because that ultimately means it will impact someone else.

These were our thoughts as we saw Hurricane Ian form and aggressively head north in the Caribbean. I learned more about the cone of uncertainty and spaghetti models than I ever knew. I followed Mike's Weather Page on Facebook hourly. I prayed. But the inevitable happened, and Hurricane Ian directly hit Sanibel and Pine Islands. The eye of the storm was 30 miles wide, and we watched the radar showing the eastern side of the eyewall — the "dirty side" with extreme maximum winds and surge — go right through our neighborhood.

Ian's Aftermath

The day after Ian's landfall (September 29) was no better. We woke up to find the Sanibel Causeway had washed away in three major areas, completely cutting off the island from the mainland. There was absolutely no information to be had.

The City of Sanibel government began implementing its disaster recovery plan. City Manager Dana Souza, Mayor Holly Smith, and the dedicated City Staff seemed to work without sleep as they managed the incredibly fluid situation, even as their own homes sustained massive damage. Governor DeSantis successfully unleashed the power of the Florida Department of Transportation, rebuilding a temporary causeway in just 21 days, versus the initial estimate of one year. Ten thousand dump truck loads of fill and working 24/7 made it happen.

What of our house? We did not partake of the early boats but relied heavily on pictures from NOAA weather satellites and US Coast Guard flyovers to determine that our house was still standing. We hired a drone operator to fly over and while the video showed exterior damage, it looked safely habitable from the outside. We were very fortunate. Many entire neighborhoods on Sanibel have ground-level homes and condominiums that will have to be completely rebuilt, as the storm surge was 15 feet across the island.

The Electric Bucket Truck Mutual Aid Convoy Comes to the Rescue!

The local electric provider on Sanibel Island is Lee County Electric Cooperative (LCEC). LCEC is a hurricane-hardened co-op well prepared for storm restoration work, but this was on a much larger scale than they had ever addressed before.

The causeway triumphantly opened, and the first groups of vehicles allowed across were 200 electric bucket trucks. What an incredible, awe-inspiring, and welcoming sight! This was mutual aid on steroids. With LCEC leading the strategic way, the bucket truck brigade carried heavily-equipped crews of public power and investor-owned utilities, electric co-ops, and electric contracting firms from across Florida and the entire United States.

They found the massive concrete poles of the transmission lines lying flat along San-Cap Road. They found completely flooded substations. They discovered hundreds of distribution poles down, transformers abandoned in the streets, and most homes' electric meters far below the storm surge line — now entirely useless pieces of metal.

Cleaning Up

After the dedicated crews had been working long enough to make streets safely passable, residents were finally allowed to come over — about a month after Ian's landfall, with still no power as the electric distribution system was being painstakingly rebuilt from scratch.

Being from "up north," you see annual media videos of hurricane aftermaths, but until you see the staggering mountains of debris 10–15 feet high lining both sides of absolutely every road, you cannot truly comprehend the sheer damage a hurricane brings.

Our house was safely standing, and the surge waterline gave us a precious few feet to spare. We began the grueling physical clean-up. There was zero power, water, or sewer service, so the city set up generator-powered community battery charging stations and placed portable toilets around the island.

Thoughts inevitably turned to electric services. In the oppressive heat and humidity of the island, no power directly equals no air conditioning, which rapidly equals aggressive mold growth. Electricity and reliable air conditioning are the only true saviors against toxic mold ravaging your home following a flood.

We got much smarter about "meter cans" — ultimately the homeowner's responsibility to provide a meter can to attach the meter to. Almost all meter cans were heavily flooded and needed replacing. There was a massive shortage of meter cans statewide and a robust secondary market rapidly emerged. There was also a massive shortage of licensed electricians to safely install meter cans and electric panels.

We're Energized!

Driving around the island in the following weeks, you would frequently see bucket trucks and invariably give the crew a wide, respectful berth, a grateful thumbs up, and secret selfish thoughts of "please come to our neighborhood next."

Then, one incredibly sunny day, a big, beautiful bucket truck slowly rumbled down our street. The electric crew confidently started working on the street poles. They meticulously strung conductor. They installed a brand new meter. Then the digital digits on the meter miraculously turned on as they energized the line. We sprinted inside, flipped the main circuit on the electric panel, and saw our lights come on. But most sweetly — hearing the soothing hum of the air conditioners kicking in was pure music.

It was a very sweet irony that the specific mutual aid crew that successfully energized our neighborhood was a group of linemen from Long Island, New York. As I rushed out to deeply thank them, I heard their unmistakable Long Island accent and saw the city name painted on their bucket truck — the exact town where I had spent the better part of two years providing financial consulting services after Hurricane Sandy. Who knew the universe operated like that?

The Unprecedented Dedication to Mutual Aid

I know that all of you who proudly work in the power and utilities business have personally seen the grateful, relieved faces of those you help. Not all of those civilian recipients truly realize the massive personal sacrifice made by crews living in temporary outside camps, sleeping in their trucks, tirelessly working 16-hour shifts in completely hazardous conditions, and being away from their families for weeks.

It is a fantastic structural feat that the electric system spanning Sanibel and Captiva has been physically rebuilt to the shape it is in today. Most homes that are physically able to take power can now safely get power. It is a profound, lasting testament to the crews that deeply sacrificed to make this happen.

Ultimately, electric co-ops and utilities put vital administrative processes in place for safely collecting field data, proper accounting, billing, transparently paying, and accurately collecting reimbursements from complex insurers and FEMA. But the entire process simply cannot work without the selfless crews' willingness to intensely sacrifice and execute the extremely hard outside physical work. The innate, unhesitating desire of utilities and co-ops to actively help each other through times of staggering strife with mutual aid is the very core fabric of the entire electric business — and we as customers are truly, deeply grateful.