LI municipalities became makeshift PSEG call centers after Isaias

In the hours and days following Long Island’s lashing by Tropical Storm Isaias, local and county emergency command centers and even mayors’ offices became critical information arms for the technology-crippled electric utility, sometimes with information officials said was badly outdated.

During late-night testimony last week, top emergency management officials from Nassau and Suffolk told state lawmakers of having to use critical emergency personnel and resources to reach out to residents on PSEG Long Island’s life-support equipment list, only to find some were unreachable, not using life-support equipment, or no longer living. PSEG Long Island and other officials spoke during a post-storm legislative hearing Thursday. 

“Ultimately, we discovered that the list prepared by PSEG was unfortunately outdated and inaccurate,” said Lisa Black, Suffolk chief deputy county executive.

Overwhelmed at its own call centers after the Aug. 4 storm, PSEG asked the county to reach out to some customers on the life-support list in all but the five East End towns, Black testified. The county made 1,100 robocalls, direct calls to another 800, and police went to the homes of some 200 people on the list.

They found that “several individuals did not in fact have life support equipment or life-threatening conditions associated with a power outage,” Black said. “In fact, they also found out that many of the customers they called had deceased prior to the [storm] event."

Black said the use of critical emergency operations teams, county executive employees and police “utilizing valuable time to call through lists like that was really unacceptable,” and advised PSEG to “make some improvements,” including updating the list “regularly.”

PSEG spokeswoman Ashley Chauvin said the list was updated regularly. 

"Our Critical Care program list is constantly being updated and customers can be added to the program at any time," she said. "We contact customers in the program twice a year to verify customer status and contact information." 

Brian Schneider, deputy Nassau County executive for parks and public works, called shortcomings in the critical care list one of several “weak links in that chain” of faulty communication at PSEG.

“From my perspective it was very troubling that there are people on this list that are deceased," Schneider told state lawmakers. "There are people on this list we can’t reach. There are people that don’t even know how to get on the list.”

Further, he said, Nassau County’s emergency operations center  "asked PSEG to be present in the building" at the outset of the storm. “ … That did not happen until day two” of the restoration.

And, he said, PSEG didn't send a "technical person" who could communicate directly with "field supervisors" to help clear "traffic-related and roadway closure issues.” 

Chauvin did not immediately respond to the accusation. 

Another major problem for Nassau, Schneider testified, was PSEG’s failure to provide line workers who could travel with its crews in the field to clear wires and trees from major roadways, including major arteries with nonoperating traffic lights. PSEG Long Island president Dan Eichhorn testified that the company did provide such crews to local governments.

Several municipal officials in testimony said their offices effectively became makeshift call centers for the utility, fielding desperate calls from those who couldn’t get through to PSEG.

“We received phone calls, texts, emails from residents morning, noon and night,” Laurel Hollow Mayor Daniel DeVita said.

But often the village couldn't provide restoration times or even when crews would show up, including in one section where water-well pumps went dry without electricity.

DeVita said: “What do I tell a 100-year-old blind and bedridden person whose neighbors have to bring in water in buckets to flush the toilet?”

Sea Cliff Mayor Edward Lieberman said his village employees had to corral work crews to help with downed trees and power lines, in most cases in non-PSEG trucks.

“My building inspector found a crew from Texas sitting in a local high school,” he said, and lured them to work on downed lines in the village.

Another crew from Vancouver, Canada, he was told, were traveling to Long Island each day because they’d been put up in a hotel in New Jersey.

“They said there were no hotels [left] on Long Island,” Lieberman said. “They probably lost three or four hours a day just in travel from Wayne, New Jersey.”

On Tuesday, LIPA trustee Matthew Cordaro, speaking for himself, said he wasn’t surprised the public officials experienced frustration. He said one of the problems is that PSEG’s prestorm emergency response drills were so prescribed that they didn’t leave room for the unpredictable.

“PSEG has the most amateurish tabletop exercise every summer,” he said. “I go to it. They have a fixed scenario where there’s a script. I’ve told them, 'You can’t get a lot out of this. You have to have an unknown scenario and every so many minutes you throw this on the table.' They don’t do that. It’s worthless if everyone knows the scenario.”

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.