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Doug Bechtel
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I knew in my heart of hearts that I was making a big mistake when I talked about OPALCO not having any transmission outages during the last winter. I knew when I wrote it that I was challenging Mother Nature. I knew when I wrote it that it wasn't the end of March. But I was hard pressed for an idea for an OPALCOGRAM, and that is why I wrote it. I caused the wind to blow on Easter Sunday!
What we did learn after a whole winter of relatively small outages is that we weren't ready for a really big outage. Our crews were ready and responded well. The problems with our telephone system, however, are almost too embarrassing to tell. It started out with the new sheriff's dispatch center where our outage telephone rings. Due to a combination of errors on our part, the county's part, and the telephone company's part, that phone wasn't working (and hadn't been working since the dispatchers moved over to the new center). So, for all of you who tried to report an outage and just got a recorded message sending you in a circle to report the outage, I apologize.
The second problem was that when the power went out on San Juan Island, there were so many incoming calls that our system overloaded and went brain dead on us. Finally, the big battery backup system that powers our telephones and radios during power outages only lasted two hours instead of the four hours it has always done in the past. After 6:30 p.m., nothing worked here at OPALCO. There was no way for you to call in or for us to call out. While the radios in all of our vehicles worked, the radio in our office was out, so I had to use the radio in the OPALCO van.
We have a group here at OPALCO that is looking for a permanent solution so this does not happen again. We are working in several areas. I have to admit that I don't know if we can afford (or even want to afford) the kind of telephone system that will be able to let all 10,000 of you call us and receive a response within just a few minutes. I don't know any other utility that is able to handle this large of a problem. Somehow, though, we have got to get a message out so that you can at least find out the magnitude of the outage.
On Sunday, I was able to put a message on the phone relating to the outage on Orcas, but after the power went out on San Juan, every time I tried to update the message, our phone system kept telling me "system busy", and I was never able to put on the new message.
I was going to end this OPALCOGRAM by telling you that it is now April and winter has run its course, but that would just be another challenge to Mother Nature. If it comes down to Doug Bechtel vs. Mother Nature, I have learned the hard way who is going to win!
Doug Bechtel
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