Power aid

Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, The, Oct 7, 2008 by Jacobs, David

The mass power outages from Hurricane Gustav, which made landfall in south Louisiana on Sept. 1, led to serious problems in several key areas, from hospitals to traffic lights to sewers. Here's a post-mortem of what happened to some of those services, and what might be different when the next storm strikes.

Cell phones

Service was spotty immediately after the storm, but providers say service was back to normal within days. Verizon, for example, claims their own testing showed nearly 95% of calls getting through in Raton Rouge by the afternoon of Sept. 2.

What happened? AT&T spokeswoman Sue Sperry described three backup power systems: diesel generators, high-capacity batteries and natural gas generators. But when commercial power is out for an extended period of time, you have to keep refueling the generators, which can take time when trees are in the way. She says the equipment was generally working fine by the afternoon after the storm, but high traffic on the networks kept some calls from getting through. Texting worked better.

What might change? Providers will examine their own performance after the storm, but Sprint, Verizon and AT&T all say they were prepared and their networks worked as well as could be expected. None offered specifics as to anything that might be done differently next time.

Hospitals

While every Capital Region hospital has backup power, most didn't anticipate extended outages. All but one hospital lost air conditioning.

What happened? Some decided the risk of transferring patients to hospitals with full power was worth the trouble. Lane Regional Medical Center in Zachary, for example, moved all 53 patients, while Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center transferred a few imminent surgery patients.

What might change? Ochsner Medical Center Baton Rouge never lost air conditioning because it had a giant rented megawatt generator in place before the storm. OLOL's board had approved the purchase of a megawatt generator before Gustav hit. Other hospitals say they'll either invest in one or make arrangements to get one quickly ahead of the next storm.

Sewage

The major plants in East Baton Rouge are fed from two different substations, which doesn't help when the whole parish loses power. Smaller systems had similar problems.

What happened? There was overflow in some areas at the manholes in East Baton Rouge; that sewage flows into the drainage system. When plants don't have power and can't process sewage, a lot of it ends up in the river. There were reports in some parishes of raw sewage backing up into homes.

What might change? East Baton Rouge Parish Public Works Director Pete Newkirk says the $1.2 billion sanitary sewer overflow plan already in the works has money for backup power for most pump stations and all treatment plants. Of the 440 pump stations in East Baton Rouge, close to 120 are large and will likely need permanent generators attached to the system; the rest could probably get by with smaller generators that could be deployed as needed.

Ascension Parish, on the other hand, has five public sewer systems and 150 private ones, all owned by the same company. The parish plans to require every system to have generator power in the future, although the public service commission would have to approve any new fees to cover that cost. There has been talk about establishing a parishwide sewer system in Ascension, but Parish President Tommy Martinez says that could cost as much as $250 million.

Traffic lights

No electricity means no traffic lights. Newkirk says there might have been one or two parish-owned lights at most that didn't go out. He says the system also took nearly a quarter-million dollars in structural damage, although the damage was much less of an issue than the loss of power.

What happened? You know what happened: confusion, delays and a crash course [no pun intended] for everyone on how to negotiate a four-way stop. Newkirk says his crews coordinated with Entergy, so the lights could be brought up immediately as power was restored in a given area.

What might change? Newkirk says the city-parish is looking into spending about $9 million on built-in natural gas generators. In the next outage, traffic lights could be turned back on within minutes. He says the cost could likely be covered with existing traffic funds, and the city-parish's new traffic signals with LED lights can be powered with small two-kilowatt generators.

Water

When a water system loses power, it loses pressure, and when pressure falls below 15 pounds per square inch, contaminants can get into the line.

What happened? The Department of Health and Hospitals issued boil alerts twice a day for several days after the storm. In the Capital Region, the problems were mainly limited to smaller systems, including wells that might serve one building or trailer park. DHH spokeswoman Jolie Adams says the smaller ones don't have the resources or manpower a larger system has. In some cases, there might only be one person who watches the system. If DHH can't reach that person, the department issues a boil advisory just in case.