Mike McCool, Director

1
Tulsa's Response to the December 2007 Ice Storm

• Mike McCool, Director
• Tulsa Area Emergency Management Agency
• October 2008

2
City/County Demographics

• City of Tulsa
• 210 square miles
• Population 383,000
• Tulsa County
• 585 square miles
• Population 563,000
• MSA 700,000
• 700 FT. AMSL
• 24 EMSA ambulances deployed at any given time
• 802 police officers 670 firefighters 200
  sheriffs deputies

3
Weather

• Were not surprised by arrival of storm
• Received first warning of storm on Dec. 4 through
  HAM radio operators
• Storm hit on Dec. 8-9
• Were surprised by severity of the storm
• Massive power outages began Dec. 9-10
• Storm caused 12 fatalities in Tulsa County and 24
  in Oklahoma.
• There were more than 200 fires in the 1st week
  13 at one time

4
The EOC
5
Emergency Operations Center

• EOC provides for eye-to-eye communications
• EOC has 5,000 square feet of office space 10,000
  square feet total
• Activated at 529 a.m. on Monday, December 10
• Remained activated for 11 days 1.5 times longer
  than previous record activation

6
Emergency Operations Center

• Operated in shifts of 12 hours on/12 hours off
• 93 responders checked in to EOC in first day
• 301 total responders checked in to EOC during
  activation
• Having the right people in the EOC is crucial

7
Five Information Sources

• 911/PSO/2-1-1/MERC/Mayors Action Center
• 911 is police, sheriffs office, fire and medical
• Was flooded with calls
• PSO provided continual information as to their
  repair activities
• 2-1-1 is a comprehensive information referral
  service for social/health services
• Took 1500 calls from temporary call center in EOC
  in first three days of storm response
• MERC is the medical nerve center of the EOC
• Mayors Action Center receives citizen complaints

8
2-1-1 Helpline

• Local 2-1-1 was unable to use their primary,
  secondary and tertiary sites, one of which had
  generator backup but lost phone service.
• 2-1-1 set up a temporary call center in the EOC,
  where they took 1500 calls over a 72-hour period.
• Resulted in an instant source of information in
  the EOC.

9
Public Service Company of Oklahoma

• PSO liaison Clay Hathaway was stationed in EOC
  throughout response, priceless source
• Fairgrounds provided 240 acres for PSO staging,
  feeding, lodging
• Line and vegetation crews came from 14 states
• 80 of downed lines were damaged by trees
• 90 million of direct damage to PSO assets
  immediately after storm hit
• One entire power transfer station burned down
• 260,000 PSO customers were without power at
  height of outage

10
PSO, contd.

• Number of main circuits out 245 out of 398
• System damage
• Over 1,000 distribution poles broken
• Approximately 9,000 meter enclosures damaged
• Approximately 1,000,000 feet of wire replaced

11
PSO, contd.

• Normal workforce
• 40 line crews
• 50 service crews (about 200 employees)
• 200 tree trimming contractors
• Mutual assistance support
• 570 line crews
• 300 tree crews
• Support personnel
• About 5,000 outside personnel

• 2,500 were line crew members
• 2,000 were vegetative crew members
• 500 were support personnel

12
PSO, contd.

• States Lending Crews
• Pennsylvania
• Ohio
• Virginia
• North Carolina
• Louisiana
• Texas
• Arkansas
• Mississippi
• Alabama
• Kentucky
• West Virginia

13
PSO, contd.

• Costs associated with hardening the
  distribution system through underground
  facilities
• New transmission construction per mile
• 600,000 overhead vs. 6 million underground
• New main distribution circuit construction per
  mile
• 70,000 overhead vs. 2 million underground
• New residential distribution construction per
  mile
• 26,000 overhead vs. 30,000 underground
• Converting inaccessible overhead residential to
  underground
• 580,000 per mile

14
PSO Outages Greater than 20,000 Customers
Affected Last 5 Years
15
Electric Cooperatives

• 4,157 outages across the state
• 3,877 broken poles
• 475 assisting personnel from 5 states

16

• What if several other states also had been hit by
  the ice storm?

17
Health Care

• Hospitals
• Six tertiary care hospitals all but one lost
  power
• Internal phone system failure
• Internal suctioning system failure
• Internal O2 system failure
• Carbon monoxide poisonings
• Several hundred reported poisonings
• 70 victims transported by EMSA
• 40 people at one time on O2 in one hospital
• No CO poisoning deaths

18
Health Care, contd.Three altered standards of
care

• Respiratory carbon monoxide detectors used at
  scene and transport by van rather than ambulance
• OSU-Tulsa Hospital became the carbon monoxide
  treatment facility due to their hyperbaric
  chamber
• Tulsa Fire Department medical response backed off
  to only personal injury accidents, cardiac
  arrests, severe respiratory distress and
  dispatcher discretion

19
Nursing Homes

• Nursing homes were encouraged strongly to shelter
  in place, rather than evacuating if at all
  possible.
• One nursing home decided to evacuate and caused
  the ice storm to affect victims three times
  instead of once. Residents were sent to several
  different locations, and some had to be moved
  more than twice.
• If at all possible, always shelter in place.

20
Water Treatment Plants

• Mohawk Treatment Plant capable of about 120
  million gpd.
• A.B. Jewell Treatment Plant capable of about 120
  million gpd.
• Some of the pumping electric motors are 4,800
  horsepower.
• Mohawk has 9 pumps, the first of which is a
  smaller pump.
• The two last pumps in the system are for backwash
  only.

21
Water Treatment Plants

• Two plants in Tulsa Mohawk and A.B. Jewell
• Eucha, Upper Spavinaw and Hudson feed Mohawk
• Lake Oologah feeds A.B. Jewell
• Tulsas water distribution system serves 600,000
  people
• There are 102 million gallons of water in the
  distribution system at any time
• Mohawk lost power on Monday morning
• Mohawk regained power on Thursday
• A.B. Jewell had a clear well out of service
• Required two consecutive negative tests for total
  coliforms before PW could bring it back up
• A.B. Jewell finalized its clear well Wednesday
  night

22
Water Treatment Plants

• Needed quick response to quashing rumors, e.g.
  that the water quality was bad.
• Media interviews necessary.
• Convey that the city will not let the water
  quality go bad without issuing an immediate boil
  order.
• City-wide training at Emergency Management
  Institute (Emmitsburg) in 2004 was invaluable
  during the storm response.
• Public Works is evaluating two options for the
  future
• A direct drive, CNG pump hooked to system, in the
  first position, to do 30 million gallons per day.
  
• A generator to drive motor in the first position.

23
Sheltering

• At the height of the storm, the Red Cross opened
  34 shelters with more than 1,800 people
  registering to spend the night. Many more came to
  shelters to eat or had meals delivered to their
  housing complex.
• 99 trained Red Cross volunteers, 38 Red Cross
  staffers and 291 volunteers from partner agencies
  such as the Tulsa Health Department and Medical
  Reserve Corps volunteered.
• The Red Cross spent 315,000 on food, shelters
  and transporting the supplies to shelters.

24
Emergency Response Assets

• State priority criteria for generators
• Hospitals
• Shelters
• Water treatment plants
• 911 centers
• FEMA VI Denton, TX
• Assets sent to Tulsa County Fairgrounds for
  distribution
• GenPack 50
• MREs 42,624
• Mobile DRC 1
• Blankets 4,000
• Cots 2,000
• Water (liters) 48,600

25
Volunteers

• Volunteers
• Difficulty in finding them, to assist TFD
• The storm was ubiquitous everyone was at home!
• Guts Churchs Team Relief
• 3 Incident Command areas during initial response
• TPDs UDE, UDN, UDSW
• Firefighters, EMSA and volunteers went
  door-to-door to assess tree debris in yards and
  weatherheads torn loose.

26
Gasoline/Diesel

• Pumping stations down due to lack of generators
• Police Departments Uniform Division East and
  Uniform Division Southwest
• City of Tulsa garage
• Tulsa County garage

27
Gasoline/Diesel

• Uniform Division North and Public Works Yard had
  generators, thus gas
• QuikTrip outstanding pre-planning made them the
  Citys heroes, generator hookups and poured pads
  at all stores
• Magellan Pipeline power down for short period
  at terminal in Tulsa immediate emergency

28
Debris Management

• Priority clearing streets
• Arterials to hospitals cleared first.
• All clearing must be prioritized.
• Electronic traffic control
• Distribution of generators
• Amount of debris will surprise you
• 2.7 million cubic yards in City of Tulsa alone
• Leaners and hangers are very dangerous

29
Clearing the Streets

• Trees in the streets cause delays in response and
  interruptions in service
• Clear pathways to hospitals and critical
  facilities first
• Nails may be a major problem if wind debris
  
• Need city and county garages up and running

30
Develop Pre-event Contracts

• Tulsas Public Works Department learned that they
  could have prevented a lot of headaches if they
  had put in place pre-event contracts
• Possibly could have started on debris removal as
  much as a month sooner.
• FEMA might chip in an extra 5, pushing their
  contribution from 75 to 80, if you have
  FEMA-approved pre-event contracts in place.
• As soon as you establish a contract, send it to
  FEMA!
• In the future, Public Works is going to use one
  contract for debris pick-up, grinding and
  disposal and a second contract for monitoring.

31
Debris Totals

• To date, the City has collected 2.7 million cubic
  yards of woody debris.
• Have paid 16 million to contractors. Hopefully
  the Citys end cost will only be 12.5 of that
  total. State
  has paid nothing yet.
• Debris collection was done is three passes, which
  is all FEMA would pay for.

32
Contractors

• Storm Reconstruction Services (SRS)
• Headquartered in Mobile, Alabama
• Trucks ranging from 10 cubic yards to 100 cubic
  yards
• Bobcats and hand crews
• Solid Resources, Inc. (SRI)
• Headquartered in Sarasota, Florida
• Conducting monitoring operation
• Took a picture and made notes at every location
  on every pass
• Public Works may consider requiring videos to be
  taken as well
• Left notes on citizens doors if there was
  anything unusual such as a car parked in the way,
  debris leaning against a retaining wall or
  covering a gas meter, etc.

33
Bidding and Documentation

• In negotiating the contracts, Public Works
  received many bids.
• Instead of paying a certain amount for each tree
  or limb, they requested bids for an amount per
  cubic yard of debris collected, regardless of how
  the debris is acquired.
• Were able to negotiate a fee of 3.79/cubic yard.
• In the future, FEMA would like for contracts to
  be based on a fee per ton, to pay by weight
  instead of mass. (They dont like paying for
  air.)
• Every tree must be GPS-searched and documented.
• This includes every tree to be removed (if 50 or
  more is damaged) and every hanging limb to be
  removed.
• This slows the process dramatically and requires
  more monitors.

34
Communication with the Public

• Need to give the earliest warning possible to
  citizens about where crews will be picking up.
• Sometimes it is impossible to give more than one
  days notice with any degree of accuracy.
• Notice given by door hangers and news media do
  not yet have a mass phone calling system.
• Volunteers were needed to go door-to-door,
  especially to assist the elderly and disabled.
• Send volunteers out with Fire Department
  personnel.

35
FEMA Debris Management Pilot

• FEMAs Debris Management Pilot Program has a
  lot to do with encouraging recycling of debris.
• If the jurisdiction makes money on the disposal
  of debris with the program, you get to keep the
  profit.
• This applies to more than just woody debris.
• Examples include burning debris in a power plant,
  turning it into mulch, selling steel and other
  metals, etc.

36
FEMA Guidance

• Resources for Debris Removal and Demolition
  Operations
• IS-632 Introduction to Debris Operations in
  FEMAs Public Assistance Program
• FEMA 325 PA Debris Management Guide
• FEMA 329 Debris Management Brochure
• Disaster Assistance Strategy 2007-2-Debris
  Removal Operations
• Debris Removal Contractor Registry
• http//www.fema.gov/government/grant/pa/debris_mai
  n.shtm

37
Caller Requests to 2-1-1
38
Unmet Needs

• Caller requests/needs for which 2-1-1 had no
  immediate referral information included
• Lists of open gas stations, pharmacies, grocery
  stores, etc.
• Lists of generator suppliers, firewood suppliers,
  batteries/flashlights, etc.
• Provision of generators for homes and businesses
• Reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses for
  weatherhead repair conducted prior to Operation
  Power Up
• Disaster food stamps, disaster unemployment, FEMA
  individual assistance requests
• Timing of PSO power restoration to individual
  homes
• Requests for special needs shelter

39
Questions/Comments

• Mike McCool
• Work 918-596-9890
• Cell 918-830-2084
• Pager 918-646-2731
• Fax [phone]
• Email mmccool_at_cityoftulsa.org