Meet the System—Orlando: 3 Hurricanes Couldn't Dim Bright House…a Textbook Case in How to Cope

Cable World, Feb 7, 2005

Satellite competition is nothing compared to the three consecutive batterings Mother Nature dealt to Bright House Networks' Orlando system. Here's how the cable operator took care of its own--and its neighbors--in the immediate aftermath of the storms.

By Simon Applebaum

On the ride up Interstate 4 from the Orlando International Airport, you can still see remnants from a trio of hurricanes that turned the city famous for Walt Disney World and Sea World into a world of devastation last fall.

Tilted trees, broken bark and snapped branches still line both sides of the highway as you make your way northwest of downtown Orlando, on the way to Lake Luchier Executive Center, the wooded industrial park which serves as home base for Bright House Networks' local system.

What transpired when Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne socked Bright House and its 770,000 customers in Orlando and nearby suburbs remains fresh in the minds of system management, almost six months after Charley set things off last Aug. 13. Even on a warm, clear early January morning, under conditions a Bright House PR rep calls "chamber of commerce picture-perfect," it's easy for Central Florida division president Chris Fenger to detail the scenes of damage all over Orlando, and what his employees did to restore normality--not once, but three times.

For Fenger and his colleagues, the series of hurricanes stands as Bright House's biggest challenge since the Advance/Newhouse Communications MSO unit assumed full ownership of all the cable systems managed under a long-running partnership with Time Warner Cable. In terms of subscribers, Orlando is Bright House's largest system, and the extensive cleanup process there dented efforts to launch VoIP telephony and postponed other service launches to later in 2005.

"There's a mind-set of accomplishment, of pride, of coming through it," Fenger says. "The employees went beyond and worked hard in trying circumstances. They feel proud of the job they did. Could some things have been done better in a crisis like this? You bet. But given the volume of what we dealt with and the magnitude of damage, we did a good job."

News Team Heroics

Bright House system employees, as well as associates at Central Florida News 13, the local all-news channel owned by Advance/Newhouse, did their duty as they coped with their own misfortunes. About 70 system and News 13 workers had their homes damaged extensively, with one $500,000 riverfront home completely destroyed. Bright House estimates that their employees suffered about $1,429,000 worth of damage; the average cost of damage per affected employee was $20,415. Bright House would not release an estimated cost of damage for the Orlando system and its 16,000 plant miles.

Central Florida News 13 VP/GM Robin Smythe still marvels at the way her 100 employees--running on pure adrenaline--covered the hurricanes while dealing with their suddenly difficult personal lives. "There's heroics that come into play in this business when my news director [Steve Chavarie] has a phone in one ear talking to his crews, making sure they are safe and taken care of, while talking to someone else about taking three oak trees off his house while his family hunkers down in a hotel," she says. "You have to love this field to do that."

Bright House had a disaster preparation plan at the ready when Hurricane Charley made landfall south of Orlando. At that time, it appeared that Bright House's Tampa system was in danger. Service trucks were refueled, windows were ready to be boarded up, standby power generators were tested and technical crews were told to prepare for emergency shifts. In fact, Fenger's system was ready to direct crews over to Tampa. Separately, News 13, which tracked Charley for several days, was gearing up to send reporters to Tampa, in partnership with Advance/Newhouse-owned channel Bay News 9.

That was the game plan Aug. 13--until 11:30 a.m., when Florida meteorologists altered their guidance and placed Charley on course to strike Orlando. "My counterpart in Tampa, Kevin Hyman, called me at home and said he had crews ready to head my way," Fenger recalls. "I thought he was kidding. Then I watched my TV set and realized, my gosh, we're the target."

"In a nanosecond, Tampa's worst nightmare became ours," Smythe adds.

By 2 p.m., Bright House pulled its service trucks off the roads, closed all facilities except for call centers and sent staff home. When Charley hit Orlando a few hours later, two VPs who started at the system that Monday--Bill Seavers in customer care and Michel Champagne for operations--boarded up a call center and spent the night there. At News 13, reporters were stationed at emergency management offices set up by city and state government workers, and the channel went live with coverage 24/7.

System crews hit the streets the next morning after Charley passed to assess damage. The early projection was that half of Bright House Orlando's customers, roughly 430,000 households, lost power.