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Local fire and police officials in Southern California want lawmakers to ensure that there is more coordination between investor-owned energy and water utilities when natural disasters or other emergencies occur. At least one requests investor-owned utilities become a part of the state and federal emergency management systems. Local first responders outlined their views at a joint legislative hearing Feb. 3 before the Assembly Utilities & Commerce Committee and Assembly Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management in Alhambra. Lawmakers held the hearing to delve into the response to the massive power outage caused by the Nov. 30-Dec. 1 hurricane force wind storm in the Los Angeles area. Southern California Edison was hardest hit among the area’s power utilities with 439,000 of its customers losing power. “There was a breakdown of communication,” testified Los Angeles County Fire Department chief Daryl Osby regarding the relationship between first responders and Edison. “Generally there is a lot of dialogue, but that didn’t occur in this instance.” Osby said that usually when natural disasters occur--a wildfire, for instance--Edison communicates and works closely with local first responders to coordinate action. But that didn’t happen in the recent wind storm, as noted by other first responders too. San Marino Fire Department chief Jim Frawley called on legislators to place Edison and other investor-owned energy and water utilities under the unified command structure put in place during emergencies when either the California Emergency Management System or National Incident Management System is invoked after a disaster. “The core of the issue here is that Edison does not have a comprehensive and coordinated incident command structure,” Frawley told lawmakers. “This was probably the most significant event they’ve had in their history and they didn’t implement it.” Frawley said that placing the utility under those public command structures would insure that Edison does a better job restoring power and communicating with first responders and affected residents and businesses in future natural disasters. Regarding the utility’s response to the storm, Frawley said “they’ve got names and titles but they don’t have experience.” He urged training and use of company personnel with “local knowledge” rather than overall knowledge of Edison’s system which spans some 50,000 square miles. The chief said, for instance, that in San Marino 100 percent of residents lost power and 95 percent of the streets were blocked by debris after the storm, making it difficult to reach residents or to begin fixing lines. Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach&#041;, chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management, applauded Frawley for “cutting to the chase.” Southern California Edison executive vice president of power delivery services Linda Ziegler told the lawmakers the wind storm and outage did not meet the utility’s criteria for coordinating with local first responders. She added that the company is reassessing its criteria. In contrast to Edison’s relations with first responders, municipal utilities--which are part of city governments--coordinated very closely with their fire, police, and transportation departments in the aftermath of the storm, according to representatives who testified at the hearing. Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, for instance, met almost hourly with sister departments in the city to coordinate the response to the outage, including making sure traffic police were dispatched to heavily-travelled intersections where signal lights had no electricity, according to Randy Howard, the muni’s power system planning and development director. If LADWP couldn’t restore power quickly to convalescent homes and other health care facilities, it arranged for the Fire Department to go check on the facilities, he added. More than 222,000 LADWP customers lost power in the storm.

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