Inside Con Edison’s Emergency Response Training for Storm Events
Picture this: It’s June 1, the start of hurricane season, and a Nor’easter has just pummeled our region, bringing down scores of trees, power lines, and utility poles.
Carla Primus’s everyday job is to serve as a work organizer for Bronx/Westchester Equipment; she plans and schedules transformer repairs. But during a drill, she’s serving as a “storm cell lead.” In this fictionalized scenario, tens of thousands of customers have lost power.
As a cell lead, it’s her duty to manage some of the mutual aid crews who’ve been called here from across the country to help restore service. In this role, it’s her job to dispatch crews to priority locations that have lost power, and to ask the necessary questions that keep crews and the public safe.
Behind the Scenes of Our Emergency Response Planning
“Is everybody clear of the feeder? Did you ride out the spur to make sure there isn’t any more damage and all the crews are off the feeder?” Primus asks another employee playing the part of her crew guide at our Westchester headquarters.
They are among hundreds of employees from across the company who’ve taken our storm cell training for overhead storm response. Introduced in 2022, this training groups together employees in cells, or clusters, that help manage mutual aid crews restoring service after major weather events. A cell consists of the cell lead, crew guides whose job it is to direct mutual aid crews in the field, as well as Estimated Time of Restoration supervisors, and clerical support people.
“This was extremely helpful: Operating the model, going through the whole process from start to finish. I learned a lot,” Primus says after her first time completing the training.
Developing employee confidence and proficiency is precisely why our Bronx/Westchester Storm Planning & Response department runs these exercises. Every Con Edison employee has a System Emergency Assignment (SEA) outside their normal job they might be called to perform during emergencies.
Why Storm Preparedness Training Matters
Storm cell exercises are an additional layer of preparedness, as every employee is expected to not only show up for their emergency role, but also to know what they’re doing.
Our Bronx/Westchester Storm Planning & Response group created the curriculum and exercises to make sure employees are prepared to respond to the next monster storm even when the last one was years before. And so that employees who have gotten new emergency roles or been hired since the last major event, can get right to work when needed.
“We know the next storm is coming. It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when. This could be the year. We must be ready. The expectations are very high from our customers, from our regulators, and from our many internal and external stakeholders,” says George Czerniewski, section manager of Bronx/Westchester Storm Planning & Response.
“These employees from various parts of the company come here to help but they’re not always as familiar with the new systems or the new technology that we keep making investments in. So, this is an opportunity to practice and sharpen those skills that they’ve learned, learn some new things, and become proficient.”
Proficiency helps the company save time and money—up to millions of dollars, says Czerniewski. If we don't manage mutual aid crews well, we could spend even more on resources. Effective emergency preparedness can reduce costly delays.
During a cell exercise, lots of fictional complications can happen, whether it's an oil spill or broken poles blocking streets. Cell leads update important outage information in our digital systems that communicate directly with our customers.
How We Train for Major Storms
John Amato, who has observed the cell training closely and whose everyday job is to oversee the specialists who supervise clerks, likens the cell structure to a mini control center. “It's not just the overhead workers restoring service. It's the backend trying to effectively manage a small army of mutual aid,” says Amato, manager of Bronx/Westchester Field Services.
Throughout the exercises, Czerniewski and his team, which includes Jonathan Kampfer, Donnell Edwards, Christian Umbro and Khrystyna Savytska, coach the employees playing cell leads and crew guides. The team will feed questions to the players, demonstrate how to manipulate our digital outage management tools, and even step into roles. The plan is for all cell leads and crew guides to go through the exercises at least two times per year so they can be ready and feel confident whenever needed.
“Our ultimate goal is to ensure a safer and more efficient restoration process,” says Edwards, a storm planning and response coordinator. “When every team member is operating at their best, customers receive accurate notifications, allowing them to make informed decisions.”
Customers have questions like: we need a hotel? Or should we wait at home for our power to be restored?”
Factoring into decisions are considerations such as elderly relatives, children who take school buses, and whether customers will get their power back in two hours or two days.
“The work we do directly affects lives,” says Edwards. “By maintaining clear, accurate communication and swift response efforts, we empower our customers with the information they need to stay safe and prepared.”