Instruments’ Post

This year, #ResolveToBeReady! Plan Ahead Nevada - you never know when a disaster will happen. Being prepared ensures you, your friends, loved ones and cherished items are ready when disaster strikes. Here are a few ideas to get you started. ✅ Snap pictures of your property and make an inventory for insurance purposes. ✅ Build a disaster supply bag with items you need if you must leave your home quickly. ✅ Learn how to shut off the utilities where you live. ✅ Keep external power sources available to charge phones and other devices during a power outage. More tips can be found here 👉https://lnkd.in/eYnqPRzv

Strong storms overnight rolled through the west side of Michigan. More storms are predicted today throughout the state. Please stay safe. Here are ways to check outages and some safety tips from Consumers Energy The public can check the status of outages at https://lnkd.in/gcHX9Jgz. They can also sign up to get outage alerts and restoration times sent to a phone, email or text message, Text ‘REG' to 232273 or visit https://lnkd.in/gR2S6TQR. Consumers Energy urges the public to keep important safety tips in mind: Be alert to crews working along roadsides. Drivers should slow down or stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear so they can go safely past. Stay at least 25 feet away from downed power lines, and to report unguarded downed lines by calling 9-1-1 and Consumers Energy at 800-477-5050. Consumers Energy reminds people that falsely calling in downed lines actually slows down the restoration process for everyone. Never use a generator in an attached garage, basement, enclosed patio or near any air intakes. Doing so could cause a generator to produce hazardous levels of carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless and deadly gas Consumers Energy will trim or remove trees interfering with electric restoration activities. Once safe to do so, clean-up of debris from tree trimming or removal during a storm emergency is the responsibility of individual property owners. In some cases, the mast that holds the electric service wires to a home or business may have been damaged or torn away. Crews will reconnect the wires to a home, but only a licensed electrician can repair or replace a mast or a cable.

Yesterday, Spectrum experienced an outage across Texas which included both internet and phone services. This outage, impacted thousands of Texas and business throughout the state. Per the company, the outage was due to hurricane beryl's caused an issue with a third-party's infrastructure. This outage not only caused thousands of Texans ability to access the internet and/or make phone calls, but it hammpered thousands of businesses from being able to process orders or take payments. As we all know, small business owners opperate on tight margins, which made this outage even more painful. After reviewing their X account, Spectrum provide several updates to customers on why the outage was happening and talked about their ongoing efforts to work with the third party provide to restore service. The responses from customers were not good. Many were demanding refunds and others said they could care less about who's fault it was. Even when the company posted it had restored service to a large portion of customers, many stated they were still without service. Many large brands who service thousands of customers commonly run into this issue during a crisis situation. While the third party may be at fault, the customers simply don't care who's responsibility it is. This can make crisis communications and responses more difficult even if it's the truth. I'm not making a judgement on the Spectrum comms team (i'm sure they're great and doing their best), but I look forward to seeing their follow up comms with customers and efforts to make things right. Did spectrum get it right from your perspective? How do you advise your client or company to communicate with customers during this type of scenario? #crisiscommunications #communications #pr #marketing #socialmedia #customers #outages #internet #cellservice #texas #hurricaneberyl

From thunderstorms to extreme heat, expect severe weather risks in the summer. Being prepared can lessen the impact of power outages and service disruptions. Learn to protect your devices before, during, and after a storm. 🌩☀️⚡ #severeweather #poweroutage #internetoutage #isp #nssl https://lnkd.in/gHvKMV5T

Uh oh. You're up against a deadline and need to reach your client? Sorry, the entire US Cellular network is down. Your deal is dead. A tad dramatic, maybe but this week's cell phone outages had me checking in with my emergency preparedness plan and how I can be more prepared. How am I preparing for another potential communications disruption? Ensure you have access to an old-fashioned landline, either at the home or at the office. Make a printed list of all your contacts, including addresses. Purchase a battery operated radio to listen to emergency communications in case you are in the midst of a hurricane, fire, earthquake, tornado, etc. Keep your electronic devices fully charged and/or have a back-up battery on standby if service is there but you lose power. Stash some cash. Credit cards cannot be processed when communications lines fail or electric supply ceases without back up generators. Keep a printed list/copies of your bank account information and other important documents that you may not be able to access and keep this in a safe place. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a TON of people to callback.

KEYS is prepared to restore service as quickly as possible if facilities are damaged by Helene. KEYS has established priorities for storm restoration that are intended to emphasize health, safety, essential community services, and to restore service in a manner that will affect the greatest number of customers first. Here’s what will happen: Before the Storm: •KEYS’ crews will work in the field to restore power until sustained winds exceed 30 miles per hour. If power outages occur once crews have been recalled from the field, KEYS will not attempt to restore power until the storm has passed and winds have diminished. Dealing with Customer Calls and Power Outages: •KEYS will accept phone calls from customers reporting electrical hazards and power outages as communication systems permit. This information will be sorted and prioritized for KEYS’ crews once they are clear to work in the field. In order to keep phone lines open, customers need only call once to report electrical hazards or a power outage. •KEYS’ crews will work as quickly as possible to restore power. Emergency services will receive top priority. The time required to restore power to the remainder of impacted customers will depend on the extent of damage to KEYS’ distribution system. Local Generation: •KEYS has over 100 megawatts of local generation available. Generating units will be utilized as need once the storm has passed.

A massive winter storm moving across the eastern half of the U.S. on Tuesday ahead of a forecast brutal freeze this weekend knocked out power to over 302,000 homes and businesses in nine states. The hardest hit states so far were Georgia with over 65,000 power outages, Florida with over 62,000 outages and Alabama with over 58,000 outages, according to data from PowerOutage. Get more details here: https://reut.rs/3Heefwe

Ensuring we're ready for emergencies is a big deal, and that's where Promaps from Infinigrid AS comes in handy for utilities. Picture this: when winter hits and snow and ice start falling, it's not just about looking out the window. Promaps uses different data streams, like keeping an eye on the weather and predicting what's coming and how it will affect the reliability of the power grid. Now, being prepared for the worst is not just about having a plan; it's about having a smart plan. We're talking about strategies to handle the toughest situations and bouncing back as quickly as possible. Why? Because when the unexpected happens, everyone benefits from a quick recovery. So, to everyone facing the challenges of weather events, we've got your back. Stay safe out there, and let's tackle whatever comes our way together.

2. Beyond Bermuda, Ernesto will pass close to Atlantic Canada early next week and potentially bring some rain, wind and rough seas. Outages linger after Ernesto Ernesto’s center never made landfall over Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands but the system’s strong winds still knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people in total. In Puerto Rico, about half of all customers on the island were at one point without power Wednesday, according to LUMA Energy, the private company that operates the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico. By Thursday evening, more than 280,000 were still in the dark. In the US Virgin Islands, just over 25,000 customers were without power Thursday evening, about half of the island’s tracked customers, according to PowerOutage.us. Heavy rain soaked the Virgin Islands late Tuesday and Wednesday. More than half a foot of rain drenched much of Puerto Rico and caused widespread flash flooding. Some locations recorded nearly a foot of rain from Ernesto: Just over 10 inches of rain fell over a 24-hour period in the mountain town of Barranquitas, according to a preliminary weather service report, while Villalba saw around 9.5 inches. Intense rainfall and flooding caused several rivers to overflow their banks in Puerto Rico and interrupted water filtration processes at a number of water processing plants to varying degrees, according to the island’s water authority. Even as Ernesto moved a few hundred miles away from Puerto Rico Wednesday night, water issues worsened. More than 250,000 water customers – about 20% of total customers – were without drinking water Thursday evening, down slightly from 300,000 customers earlier in the day, according to the island’s emergency portal system.

Over here in Texas, we experienced a severe storm last night, causing chaos with tree branches strewn about and widespread power outages. The storm led to an unexpected consequence for me as a falling tree branch ripped the ONT box from our wall, leaving me without internet until the 30th. However, thanks to a backup plan, my work remained unaffected. Equipped with the best hot-spot plan on all the phones in my house, I was able to seamlessly transition to using them for internet access, ensuring uninterrupted work until the house Wi-Fi could be restored. Just like a storm brings unavoidable risks such as falling tree branches, sometimes risk is inherent and unavoidable. It’s crucial to plan ahead and mitigate potential damages. Preparedness is key in navigating unforeseen challenges.