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During a long-term power outage, communications challenges with emergency management and the local government can hinder recovery efforts. Use these tips to build and maintain a relationship with your local emergency management agency that allows for an open flow of information before, during and after a weather-induced power outage.

Maintain your relationship with emergency management before and between disasters.

• People, personnel and expectations need to be well-known. Hold regular meetings with your local emergency management agency to discuss incident management.

Share your emergency operations plans to establish clear roles and responsibilities.

• Coordinate and share your emergency operations plans with emergency management before a disaster to set clear roles and responsibilities for leaders on both sides.
• Avoid infringing on emergency management’s responsibilities during an event — utilities are a subset of emergency management’s command structure.
• Consider providing a timeline to emergency management of when you will provide specific information during a disaster, such an update on power restoration times every 24 hours.

Designate a liaison to your local emergency management agency.

• If possible, the liaison should be emergency management’s point of contact during emergency and non-emergency situations.
• If not, ensure emergency management knows who to contact during an emergency and has communicated clear expectations with them pre-incident.

If communications arise during an event, ask your public utilities commissioner (or the public utility regulating agency) to mediate communications between the utility and the locality.

• Because the commission oversees utilities, they may be able to better manage requests for information, such as restoration estimates for power or critical infrastructure.

Share your special-needs population list with emergency management and provide frequent status updates during an event. 

• Work with emergency management pre-incident to prioritize your special needs population list and ensure emergency management has the most up-to-date information.
• Have a system in place to provide constant status updates on special-needs residents throughout the power outage, but be aware that HIPPA privacy restrictions can cause issues if not sorted out pre-incident.

Work with emergency management to prioritize the utility’s critical infrastructure restoration list.

• Work with emergency management before a disaster to ensure your list is prioritized based on importance using a tiered system.
• Identify “single point of failure” items – like a major sewage line – that need immediate attention during an event.
• Provide frequent updates to emergency management on the status of critical infrastructure throughout a power outage.