After '08 ice storm, Northeast hunkers down

updated 5:37 p.m. ET Nov. 3, 2009

JAFFREY, N.H. - One of the huge pine trees that surrounded Sieglinde Poegel's home of 42 years crashed through the roof and landed in her living room during the ice storm that crippled much of the Northeast last December.

"It sounded like I was in a war again. I lived through World War II in Germany when the bombs fell, and I was scared something awful," she recalled.

Poegel and her husband, Werner, were unable to return permanently for several months to their home in Jaffrey, about 15 miles from the Massachusetts state line.

This year, they are taking no chances.

"The house is repaired and we took another step — cut every tree on our property out. Every one of the trees," said Poegel, 72. "I've still got rhododendron bushes, so we don't really miss them."

As the cold season returns to the Northeast, residents, utilities and emergency managers say they're better prepared, thanks to the lessons from that ferocious ice storm Dec. 11-12 that left hundreds of thousands without power — some for two weeks.

At Unitil, the utility most assailed for delays in restoring power, every employee now has a storm assignment. In New Hampshire, where more than half of the state's homes and businesses went dark, lawmakers passed a bill allowing utilities, which do year-round tree trimming in the heavily forested state, to cut on private property if landowners don't respond to a written notice within 45 days.

Emergency management agencies in several states have emphasized training and planning for a worst-case scenario and being more aggressive about using radio, Web sites and social media outlets such as Twitter for reports of outages and updates.

Utility sued by residents
State and local governments harshly criticized the utilities for their response to the storm. The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities this week ordered New Hampshire-based Unitil, which provides electricity to four communities in that state, to hire an independent auditor to review its management system. Some residents sued the utility for losses incurred in the storm. New Hampshire is soon releasing its own report on the utilities' performance.

Todd Black, a Unitil vice president, said the region, which includes his company, had never seen such devastation. He said Unitil has reached most of the 28 goals it outlined in a post-storm self-assessment. Among them: planning for an impending storm with checklists three days ahead of impact; maintaining a network of extra resources, including tree-trimming contractors and line repair crews; training more staff to assess and report damage; and accommodating more customer calls.

Slideshow   '08 Ice Storm View images from the Northeast ice storm that hit last December. more photos

The company has a new emergency command center in Hampton that oversees three regional ones. It went through a mock drill in September.

"There are planning chiefs, operations chiefs, logistics chiefs, as well as administrative and finance chiefs, and of course, communications," said Richard Francazio, Unitil's new emergency response director. "We've created a very structured and disciplined format to address any type of event that comes through."

Public Service Company of New Hampshire, the largest utility in the state, wants to use more staff during large-scale outages to maintain contact with communities, spokesman Martin Murray said.

In Massachusetts, officials from about 30 safety and emergency agencies recently attended an extended training session on handling another severe ice storm. Peter Judge of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said workers weren't prepared for the extraordinary amount of heavy debris that blocked roads and kept power crews away from damaged equipment for days. Connecticut National Guard members with chain saws were called in to help remove fallen trees and telephone poles.

"There's a lot more manpower involved as opposed to just getting a plow and driving down the street," Judge said. "You literally had to cut your way down the street to get there."

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