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Helping the Midwest Rebound from Hurricane Ike

When the remnants of Hurricane Ike hit our Midwest service areas – including parts of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky – in September 2008, approximately 1.1 million Duke Energy customers lost power. Historians called the wind storm the most damaging Cincinnati had seen in a century. The around-the-clock power restoration effort, which lasted just over a week, involved more than 3,000 workers at its peak. Call center representatives fielded nearly half-a-million telephone calls during this period. In all, our crews replaced more than 1,300 broken poles, 100 miles of power lines and nearly 1,200 transformers.

In addition to rebuilding the electric system, Duke Energy leaders partnered with government and emergency management agencies to provide emergency information, distribute bottled water, clean up damage from the storm and direct families in need to shelters. Our efforts earned us the Emergency Recovery Award from the Edison Electric Institute in March 2009.

We learned several important lessons from Hurricane Ike that have helped us respond to subsequent storms:

We created a new Major Storm Event Organization to speed our ability to handle surges in customer inquiries resulting from severe weather.
We increased the number of storm restoration staging areas – where personnel and equipment assemble to begin repairs – to better distribute resources as quickly as possible during major weather events.
We began using Twitter – a “micro-blogging” and social networking Web service – to communicate power restoration updates to customers via their cell phones and computers.