this Saturday marks the beginning of
hurricane season and NOAA is predicting
as we've said a near-normal hurricane
season but that still means we could see
up to 15 named storms joining me now to
explain what JEA is doing to prepare
ahead of any storms I'm talking about
just hurricanes but tropical storms as
well is Melissa dike she is the
president and CEO of JEA thank you for
being here - appreciate it thanks for
having me so I remember talking about
this a little bit last year also it's
something that JEA refers to as
restoration one two three you know at
the end of the day when I lose my power
you know I'm gonna call probably a
non-stop just because it's miserable
being without power and that humidity
and everything else but there is a
process it's always good for the for the
viewers to know in terms of how you
focus your efforts immediately and
that's not necessarily on individual
customers to begin with right that's
right we've learned so much from our
experience through the last two storms
and by sending aid to the west coast
after the storm last year and all of
those learnings have really fed into
this new process that that we like our
community and to understand the way that
we restore power after a large storm
like a hurricane is through the
restoration one two three process and
that refers to the three phases the
first phase of restoration just like
when you're driving on the road and an
ambulance comes up behind you you would
pull over for that ambulance we ask our
customers to be patient and recognize
that we're going to be focused on public
safety during that first phase of
restoration and really hitting the
highest priority targets from a public
safety perspective the good news is is
as we restore those targets will also be
restoring the backbone of the electric
grid which means most of our customers
are probably going to come back up
during phase one during phase two we ask
our customers to call in and communicate
with us we're going to be working
circuit by circuit from beginning to end
working to restore all of our customers
during phase two we do ask them to call
in six six five six thousand they can
text out to my JEA because we want to
make sure that we address their outage
specifically during phase two and phase
three is our final repairs process okay
so let me stop you at phase two if I
will since it affects so many the people
who are watching how do you go about
then determining which customers are the
ones that maybe get to the top of the
list associated with that phase two as
opposed to individual customers I mean
if you live in rural area
should you anticipate just because
there's not a lot of people in your
community you know maybe only 10 down
your dirt road and so as a result
they're not considered a high priority
and that you would focus on areas with
larger outages as an example our
priority restoration happens during
phase one and our priority list consists
of hospitals of the shelters that have
been opened really things that are tied
directly to public safety from there
what we'll be doing is working the grid
circuit by circuit from the farthest
upstream all the way downstream
systematically so the way that we do
that is trying to get the most customers
back the earliest but within that it's
really a systematic way of us
approaching that what the good news for
customers through the restoration
process is one of our learnings from the
last two storms was how to bring in a
tremendous amount of mutual aid into our
community to be able to get customers
restored as quickly as possible so we'll
put that mutual aid on as many circuits
as we can take customers back as quickly
as we can so as we prepare for hurricane
season which officially starts on
Saturday is there something that we can
do as homeowners or renters as an
example that can maybe reduce our
chances of losing power you know in
terms of tree branches and other things
that may really hamper it or also raise
our risk of losing power absolutely just
like at JEA we are focused on hurricane
preparedness we encourage our customers
and community to be as well making a
personal plan is really important
ensuring that you're doing tree trimming
around the service to your home will be
important to make sure that that remains
as resilient as possible during a storm
and we of course encourage our customers
to go on JEA comm update your contact
information that'll be the best way to
receive information from us after a
storm now I'm not trying to put you on
the spot but Aaron's on you know raised
some questions certainly that we had
yesterday in regards to on a different
topic you know the chances of because
this is all along the fact of you know
reducing cost and you know hurricanes
can be expensive there is some talk not
certainly next year that we could see an
increase in all of our rates is part of
this associated with concerns about the
fact that hurricanes just cost us a
whole lot of money one of the benefits
that we have as a municipal utility is
we have access to reimbursements from
FEMA and so even though hurricanes are
expensive
there is no limitation on our
investments that we're making and making
to our grid is resilient both in
electric and in water and when we're
impacted by a storm the expenses that we
incur largely reimbursed by the federal
government all right so then that
wouldn't be associated with any rate
increases that would see as a result of
concerns and that's right most of
hurricanes and then quickly I know that
we've often had problems with with the
sewage backup is that also something
that's being handled you know at some of
the pump stations we've been so
aggressively bolstering resiliency in
our wastewater system as part of our
preparedness for storms we learned a lot
after Hurricane Matthew and in fact our
impact on the environment was reduced
almost 90 percent between Matthew and
Irma because of those resiliency
improvements that we made we're
continuing to improve resiliency of the
system every day and so you'll see less
and less of that in future storm events
well we certainly hope that none of this
is going to be tested let's make sure
that thank you thank you I appreciate it
and as we do approach hurricane season
don't forget that the state of Florida
is giving shoppers a break from paying
sales tax on hurricane supplies and that
starts this Friday among the items
included in the tax free holiday
flashlights batteries radios tarps
tie-downs generators gas containers you
just heard the CEO of of JEA saying this
is all about prep repairing not just for
JEA but also us as homeowners the
tax-free holiday starts again on June
1st on Friday and then it runs through
Thursday June 6 for a complete list of
what's included in the sales tax holiday
you can go to our website news for Jax
com