Strong Local Regulator Key to Virgin Islands Hurricane Response, NARUC Told
BALTIMORE -- State and territory commissioners differed on how involved they should be in responding to major hurricanes and other disasters, speaking on network resilience panels this week at NARUC's meeting. A Georgia commissioner advocated a hands-off approach, but a U.S. Virgin Islands commissioner said his agency’s involvement was critical in responding to hurricanes Irma and Maria. “In a catastrophic event, you actually have to represent the utilities, and they can’t do it without you,” said Virgin Islands Public Services Commissioner Johann Clendenin.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
“For the most part, we need to stay out of the way,” though monitoring utilities’ preparation for disasters is important, said Georgia Public Service Chairman Stan Wise. Clendenin disagreed, saying utility commissions should coordinate response between government and utilities, and all telecom providers should be under the jurisdiction of the PSC. Many commissions are deregulated, he noted: “We as regulators have manufactured a reality in telecommunications that’s inappropriate.”
Category 5s Irma and Maria struck the Virgin Islands over a 10-day period, destroying 110 of 120 wireless towers, Clendenin said. Irma destroyed the Public Service Commission (PSC) headquarters in St. Thomas, forcing it to move operations to St. Croix, said Clendenin, who took charge when other commissioners weren’t available. Buried fiber survived the storm, but three days later there were four cuts, a week later 17 and now 48. “As people go through and hack their way out of their houses … they hack through the fiber,” he explained. He said 911 went down, with the public safety answering point (PSAP) unable to get people’s locations. Ten weeks later, the territory has restored none of the wireline network and 40 percent of the wireless network, Clendenin said.
Establishing jurisdiction under its customer service authority, the PSC formed a telecom team to respond, Clendenin said. Generators needed fuel, so the PSC took control of getting that to carriers, the commissioner said. It wasn’t immediately possible to get the wireless or wireline networks back up, he said, so the telecom team directed deployment of hot spots at shelters, hospitals and other key locations. Puerto Rico’s utilities regulator lacked telecom jurisdiction and had no way to coordinate getting support to towers, he said.
The hurricanes “brought the best out of everybody,” said Virgin Islands carrier Viya CEO Alvaro Pilar on a Sunday panel. “You make decisions that are not selfish.” The company had to fix fiber cuts to the Virgin Islands PSAP 14 times in about 66 days, he said. Power was a big problem, since no generator can last that long, he said.
Starting as a typical wind event but turning into a major flooding disaster, Hurricane Harvey was different from what Texas had seen before, Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker said. It was impossible for weeks to get into many areas to repair poles and other infrastructure, she said. Gubernatorial waivers on many regulations sped the agency’s response, she said.
Utilities must talk to customers in a disaster, and mobile devices have become the major means of communication, said state and utility officials on a Tuesday keynote panel. To ensure effective communication in a disaster, utilities must work more closely with the communications sector and prepare for the possibility that users’ mobile devices may not be functioning, said Utilities Technology Council CEO Joy Ditto. Cellphones frequently don’t work during disasters; unlike energy companies, telecom carriers just “don't have that need to be quite as reliable,” she said.
Hurricane Notebook
AT&T wants FCC International Bureau OK for a C-band network of temporary fixed earth stations to help restore communications services in Puerto Rico after Irma and Maria. In a request for special temporary authority Monday, it said the seven antennas -- two near San Juan and five at various locations around the island -- would communicate with the Eutelsat 113 West A and Eutelsat 117 West A satellites. It said the antennas are on site in Puerto Rico.
Thirty-nine percent of U.S. Virgin Islands cellsites were offline Tuesday, up from 37 percent the day before, with 78 percent in St. John still out, the FCC reported. Some "95% (up from 93% last week) of the population was reported recently to be covered by the wireless carriers." Given "widespread power outages ... large percentages of consumers are [reported] without either cable services or wireline service," the agency said. "While the companies have been actively restoring service, the majority of their customers do not have service because commercial power is not yet available."