Introduction
Disasters can strike at any moment, in many different forms. When a disaster strikes and businesses aren’t prepared, their operations can be affected. By having a comprehensive disaster management plan, businesses can be prepared to handle any disaster, help reduce the impact of them and recover quickly when they do occur.
CESC, the power utility company of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, successfully handled a disaster situation during super cyclone Amphan in 2020, followed by super cyclone Yaas within a year. This Whitepaper presents CESC’s Disaster Management strategy centred on resilience. It is an exemplary instance which demonstrated team work, intricate planning, sheer determination, resilience and hard work. The Whitepaper is a guide for businesses to be far better prepared to handle unprecedented, high impact crises and ensure reliability of their services. For all teams and leaders, it is a story of how intricate planning can overcome gaps and help the business to rise above a crisis.
In each section of this Whitepaper, we have talked about how CESC handled various situations. We have also presented the Universal Learnings emanating out of these situations. This would enable each business to adapt these lessons to their particular scenarios.
Super Cyclonic Storm Amphan: Unprecedented Fury
Super Cyclone Amphan made landfall as a powerful Category 5 cyclone at Bakkhali, West Bengal on 20th May 2020 at 2:30 PM IST. West Bengal was the epicentre of the cyclone's landfall. Amphan was an unprecedented fury in every sense, for CESC’s license area, facing a maximum wind speed of 133 kmph. Rainfall recorded was 203 to 236 mm over 24 hours from the morning of 20th May to the morning of 21st May. To draw a comparison of the extent of severity, Aila, the earlier super cyclone that hit Kolkata in May 2009, had a wind speed of 90 kmph and rainfall of 109 to 141 mm.
Pre-Disaster Arrangement
Universal Leaning:
- Planning needs to be structured to pre-empt and respond to disasters effectively.
- Cognizance needs to be given to the escalation of situations that need immediate attention.
- Worst case scenarios have to be conceived and prepared for during a sudden disaster.
CESC took all-round pre-Amphan disaster preparedness and pre-emptive measures, adhering to the existing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)..
Pre-emptive Checking of Network Health and Readiness for Ensuring Uninterrupted Power Supply for the Essential Services
1. LOAD GENERATION BALANCE
Load-generation balance was maintained on real-time basis with the help of Budge Budge Generating Station (BBGS) and Haldia Energy Limited (HEL).
2. OUTDOOR YARDS OF GENERATING / RECEIVING & SUBSTATIONS
Necessary checking of the outdoor yards of generating stations, receiving stations and substations were carried out and required corrective actions were taken much prior to the cyclone.
Network Automation Checking at Essential Supply Points
Arrangements were made for real-time checking and monitoring of Network Automation features (to automatically restore power through standby supply in case of failure of primary supply) with respect to all emergency establishments like pumping stations, Covid-19 hospitals and quarantine centres, administrative head quarters etc.
Uninterrupted Power Supply to Covid 19 Centres, Hospitals & Nursing Homes
Arrangements were made to maintain uninterrupted power supply to all government and private hospitals treating Covid 19 patients and government quarantine centres.
Back-up Generator
Back-up generators were arranged and kept on standby to maintain uninterrupted power supply to all hospitals (government and private) treating Covid-19 patients, government quarantine centres and drinking water pumping stations.
Storm Feeder Mapping for Necessary Shutdown During Inclement Weather
Mapping of consumers with primary network was done to the extent possible, so that immediate shutdown of network elements feeding predominantly the overhead distribution network may be effected to ensure the electrical safety of consumers in case of an exigency.
Effective Communication Making Use of Technology
Universal Leaning:
- Work-out various scenarios and possible responses.
- Figure out point-of-contacts through whom communication will be channelized.
- Establish protocols and communication links.
- Identify stakeholders in advance who need to be communicated with.
Weather Updates
CESC established a real-time communication channel with India Meteorological Department (IMD) for getting weather updates.
Internal Communication for Disaster Preparedness
1. HOURLY CYCLONE UPDATES
Hourly cyclone updates from IMD were circulated with the key officials and operations team of CESC from 17th May, till ‘no danger’ was declared on the morning of 21st May.
2. DEDICATED WHATSAPP GROUP
A dedicated WhatsApp group was used for instant internal communication regarding Amphan preparedness.
Communication to Consumers
Proactive communication was sent to the consumers prior to the storm through system-generated SMS, notifying about the possible interruption of supply and also to ensure electrical safety during the inclement weather, assuring them of round-the-clock service from CESC. This measure helped the consumers to be mentally prepared and also reduced the number of calls landing at the call centre.
Close Coordination with Stakeholders
Regular contact with local and state-level administration, police and local people representatives was ensured prior to Amphan in a structured manner.
Alternative Voice Communication Modes
Healthiness of very high frequency (VHF) handsets provided in CESC mobile vans and availability of BSNL mobile numbers provided to the senior officers was checked before the incident. Availability of mobile trunking sets for use by the Control Room to check communication with Budge Budge Generating Station (BBGS) and Southern Generating Station (SGS) was ensured.
Augmentation of Infrastructure & Resources and their Placement at Strategic Points
Universal Leaning:
- Teams with senior resources should be placed in strategic and decentralised places to take quick decisions and handle the emergency situations.
- Additional resources need to be deployed quickly to handle the crisis situation.
- Personnel planning and open communication channels are absolutely necessary to handle a disaster situation.
Contractor Workforce Ramp Up for Supply Repair/Restoration
Amphan struck during the initial months of the first phase of complete lockdown during the pandemic. Strength of supply restoration and repair personnel during lockdown period was much lower than the usual, owing to travel restrictions arising out of the pandemic.
Urgent meeting was conducted with all contractors, who were advised to scale up their resources and manpower. More personnel were kept on stand-by prior to Amphan. Senior nodal official from CESC was deputed to deal with the contractors. A nodal person was identified for each contractor who was available 24x7 to address any issue.
Additional Resources
Maintenance teams with adequate resources were deployed at various operational levels – HT Network Operations, LT District Operations etc.
Ramping-up Call Centre Operations
Call centre infrastructure was ramped up to receive and handle bulk call volume as compared to a normal day.
Additional Manning and Availability of Duty Roster
The deployment of all operational departments was ramped up. The duty rosters of all operational departments were kept available at System Control, for handling an emergency scenario.
Transport
High chassis vehicles were kept available with the district operations teams, to overcome water logging issues during supply restoration work.
Security Arrangement
Security Officers were posted at all the site offices during the emergency period. Manning at the Security Control Room at CESC House was strengthened as well.
Decentralised Emergency Control Rooms and Availability of Senior Officials
1. DECENTRALISED EMERGENCY CONTROL ROOM
A decentralised Emergency Control Room for the real-time monitoring and management of the danger removal and restoration process was set up.
2. EMERGENCY SUPPLY RESTORATION
Strategic placement of emergency supply restoration teams at approximately 150 decentralised locations across the license area was ensured. Senior Officers were available at CESC House Control Room, HT Command Station & LT Control Room during and post Amphan.
Post-Amphan Disaster Recovery Phase
Universal Leaning:
- In case of an emergency service like power utility, there should be prioritisation done of the consumers based on their needs, to optimise the available resources.
- After a disaster strikes, the focus should be on quick recovery and restoration of operations so that the impact on the consumers can be minimised.
Amphan brought with it a massive storm surge and incessant rainfall, causing damage to life and housing property, uprooting trees and street lighting poles leading to road blocks and flooding. The super cyclone also inflicted devastating damage to the region’s electricity and communication infrastructure.
Distribution network in the core city area of CESC is underground, and hence, it was not impacted much during Amphan. The effect of Amphan was predominantly in the overhead areas, in the Southern part of Kolkata and other fringe areas of Howrah.
It incurred massive destruction of the optical fibre network of all the cellular companies. CESC’s communication network made of optical fibre cables was damaged too. Since most of the arterial roads got blocked due to uprooted trees and street lighting poles, mobilisation and logistics of the repair workforce and infrastructure posed a major issue.
Prevailing lockdown, containment zones, contamination and travel restrictions led to the shortage of adequate skilled workforce. Adhering to social distancing norms posed another challenge.
Focusing on Quick Power Restoration
In the aftermath of the cyclone, almost all the upstream networks which tripped during the storm resumed normal operations within 3 hours 40 minutes under the thorough supervision of engineers from CESC’s System Control/HT Command Station. This coupled with SCADA system, provided network visibility and control for faster supply resumption and achieving minimal downtime.
The priority was to promptly restore power for healthcare facilities and major drainages within 30 minutes, followed by the large area outages, 98% of which were restored within 2 hours.
To speed up the process further, additional workforce was deployed with the help of CESC’s distribution franchisee businesses in other states. The teams were re-deployed from areas where power had been restored to those that required immediate attention.
Shortage of materials for repair work was overcome through prompt liaison with vendors and speedy transfer of existing stock to the affected sites. These efforts were effectively supplemented by the support from the police and municipal authorities to enable structured and systemized power restoration.The progress of area-wise power restoration process was communicated daily through newspapers and news channels.
Benchmarking Similar Disaster Management by Other Power Utilities (International & Domestic)
About 99% of CESC’s consumers whose power supply was affected were restored in phases within the next 7 days. This created a new global benchmark in the power utility business. Below chart shows time taken to restore power post similar cyclonic disasters across the world.
Leveraging the Learnings from Amphan to Prepare for the Next Disaster - Cyclone Yaas
Universal Leaning:
- Logistics and safety are paramount to help the manpower function in an emergency situation.
- Minute planning and prior arrangements are critical to mobilise things quickly when a disaster strikes.
- It is important to learn from a previous experience and implement those learnings to better handle a similar situation.
On 25th - 26th May 2021, IMD Kolkata forecast the possibility of a severe cyclonic storm, Yaas, to make a landfall on Odisha-West Bengal coasts. Based on the previous year’s experience with Amphan, CESC was immediately on high alert to prevent disruptions in the operations due to the cyclone.Existing state lockdown and operation of multiple Covid hospitals, vaccine cold chain points and Covid care homes that required stable power supply, aggravated the challenge. Further, ‘full blood moon high tide’ coincided with the cyclonic heavy rainfall which rendered the operation of drainage pumping stations even more essential, to maintain uninterrupted stable power supply.
Having a time span of 3 days in hand since the notification from IMD, CESC geared up its various departments across the organisation for strategic planning and necessary arrangements to manage the upcoming cyclone.
CESC adopted a Three-Pronged Approach – Communication & Coordination, Redundancy Enhancement and Resource Augmentation, to ensure adequate preparation for the impending cyclone.
Enhanced Coordination with the Authorities
- Co-ordination with local police stations, councillors and ward-level liaison with municipal authorities was maintained to update on the preparedness status. Senior Nodal Officers from CESC were deputed at police control rooms for quicker response.
- Regular communication was established with the highest administration of the state including the Honourable Power Minister, Chief Secretary, Power Secretary and Commissioner of Police - updating on CESC’s arrangements.
- Separate WhatsApp Groups were formed to enable real-time communication and prompt action – internally within CESC teams and with the external stakeholders (IMD, local police stations, municipal bodies etc).
Proactive Maintenance and Essential Supplies
- Inspection and maintenance activities were conducted prior to the storm to avoid electric shocks.
- In the areas vulnerable to water logging, the level of the distribution boxes was raised to avoid ingress of water.
- Necessary steps were taken to maintain uninterrupted power supply in Covid hospitals, nursing homes and vaccine cold chain points. Communications were made to all the hospitals and nursing homes to ensure that they have back-up captive power supply in case of unforeseen exigencies.
- Diesel generator sets were arranged to serve as back-up for covid hospitals, vaccination stores, local pumping stations etc. Dedicated agency for fuel management of these gensets was deployed.
Complaint Handling
- The existing call centre was reinforced with a backup network that is predominantly underground with auto change-over. Another underground optical fibre Jio back-up link was also integrated. 720 channels were kept ready for simultaneous call-handling at the call centre. An additional call centre was set-up at CESC’s own premises.
- An Emergency Control Room was setup and was manned by senior officers, with dedicated helpline numbers.
- Multi-channel complaint docketing system was available to the consumers which included Social Media, WhatsApp BOT, Chat BOT, Website and Mobile App. Separate camps at offices were opened for walk-in complaints.
- Dedicated calling route with CESC’s nodal officers was set-up for handling complaints from critical and sensitive installations. Satellite phones were provided at Generation Control Rooms and CESC House Control Room.
Supply Restoration and Breakdown Repair Teams
To augment the restoration teams’ strength, external manpower was arranged from Asansol, Dhandbad, Malda, Rajasthan etc. Manpower in the Overhead Restoration and Repair teams and Underground teams were ramped up significantly. In addition to this, manpower was also arranged for Testing, Substations, Transmission Projects, Construction and Planning departments.
Dedicated transport facility, required tools and tackles and work safety training were provided for personnel coming to the city from outside. Entire manpower was adequately trained for the past one-year to handle an emergency like this and carry out work by adopting the necessary COVID protocols.
Ensuring Adequate Material & Transport
Adequate coal stock of 15-20 days was kept at the Generating Stations to handle any shortage of coal. 3 units of Budge Budge Generating Station and 2 units of HEL Generating Station were kept operational. Alternative dumping arrangement for ash evacuation was made to ensure smooth operations of the generating stations. Necessary maintenance of the 400 kV, 220/132 kV overhead circuits was conducted.
Quick mobilisation of adequate inventory of emergency materials and decentralised storage in various locations was ensured. Specialised equipment like electric saws, mechanised augur machines, gas-operated tree cutting machines, and bamboo ladders were kept available for use when needed. Adequate goods vehicles and passenger vehicles for the transportation of the restoration teams were arranged.
Customer Communication
Universal Leaning:
- Communication strategy is something which can’t be made secondary or belittled. Often great work gets unnoticed or criticised because communication is inadequate. Time and effort need to be given to get this right.
- Prior and proactive communication help to get support and favourable response from the consumers.
- Multiple online and offline channels of communications should be used to reach out to all segments of customers.
- It is important to maintain a constant communication with the customers and keep them updated and adequately prepared during an emergency situation.
- The consumers were re-assured of CESC’s round-the-clock service through various communications.
- System triggered power outage SMS were sent to consumer groups whenever the power supply of an area was switched off owing to water logging.
- Mike announcement for public safety was done in areas vulnerable due to water logging.
- Daily media (both television & print) briefing was conducted from two days prior to the cyclone.
- Hourly communication on social media was done from a day preceding the cyclone.
Conclusion
Following the learning that CESC had during Amphan, the company had a better disaster management plan in place and was much better prepared for Cyclone Yaas. The focus was on minimising any convenience to the consumers by deploying more manpower on-ground, co-ordination and communication with the various stakeholders and ensuring uninterrupted power supplies to its service areas.CESC’s all-round preparedness, coordination and timely communication were much appreciated by the highest levels of the government, ministry, police authority, municipal corporations and the consumers alike.
Annexure
In addition to CESC’s case study on disaster management, we present a 10-step method of effectively communicating during a crisis situation.
The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications
By Jonathan Bernstein, Chairman & Founder, Bernstein Crisis Management
Every organisation is vulnerable to crises. If you don’t prepare, you will incur more damage. Looking at existing crisis management-related plans while conducting a vulnerability audit (the first step in crisis preparedness), what is often found is a failure to address the many communications issues related to crisis or disaster response. Experience demonstrates that organisational leadership often does not understand that in the absence of adequate internal and external communications:
- Operational response will break down.
- Stakeholders will not know what is happening and quickly become confused, angry, and negatively reactive.
- The organisation will be perceived as inept, at best, and criminally negligent, at worst.
- The length of time required to bring full resolution to the issue will be extended, often dramatically.
- The impact to the financial and reputational bottom line will be more severe.
The basic steps of effective crisis communications are not difficult, but they require advance work in order to minimise damage. So if you’re serious about crisis preparedness and response, read and implement these 10 steps of crisis communications, the first seven of which can and should be undertaken before any crisis occurs.
The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications - Pre Crisis
1. Anticipate Crises
If you’re being proactive and preparing for crises, gather your Crisis Communications Team for intensive brainstorming sessions on all the potential crises that could occur at your organisation. There are at least two immediate benefits to this exercise:
- You may realise that some of the situations are preventable by simply modifying existing methods of operation.
- You can begin to think about possible responses, about best-case/worst-case scenarios, etc. Better now than when under the pressure of an actual crisis.
This assessment process should lead to creating a Crisis Response Plan that is an exact fit for your organisation, one that includes both operational and communications components.
2. Identify Your Crisis Communications Team
A small team of senior executives should be identified to serve as your organisation’s Crisis Communications Team. Ideally, the organisation’s CEO will lead the team, with the firm’s top public relations executive and legal counsel as his or her chief advisers. Other team members are typically the heads of your major organisational divisions, as any situation that rises to the level of being a crisis will affect your entire organisation. And sometimes, the team also needs to include those with special knowledge related to the current crisis, e.g., subject-specific experts.
3. Identify and Train Spokespersons
Categorically, any organisation should ensure, via appropriate policies and training that only authorised spokespersons speak for it. This is particularly important during a crisis. Each crisis communications team should have people who have been pre-screened, and trained, to be the lead and/or backup spokespersons for different channels of communications. All organisational spokespersons during a crisis situation must have:
- The right skills
- The right position
- The right training
These days, spokesperson responsibilities invariably include online communication, and social media is a very easy place to make a mistake. Matching potential spokespersons’ skills with their assignments as a member of the Crisis Communications Team is critical.
4. Spokesperson Training
All stakeholders, internal and external, are just as capable of misunderstanding or misinterpreting information about your organisation as the media. It’s your responsibility to minimise the chance of that happening. Spokesperson training teaches you to be prepared, to be ready to respond in a way that optimises the response of all stakeholders.
5. Establish Notification and Monitoring Systems
Notification Systems: Today, we need to have – immediately at hand – the means to reach our internal and external stakeholders using multiple modalities. Many of us have several phone numbers, more than one email address, and can receive SMS (text) messages or faxes. Instant Messenger programmes, either public or proprietary, are also very popular for business and personal use. We can even send audio and video messages via email. And then, of course, there is social media. This may be the best/fastest way to reach some of our stakeholders, but setting up social media accounts for this purpose is not something you can do after a crisis breaks, because nowhere does news of a crisis spread faster and more out of your control than on social media. It is absolutely essential, pre-crisis, to establish notification systems that will allow you to rapidly reach your stakeholders using multiple modalities.
Monitoring Systems: Intelligence gathering is an essential component of both crisis prevention and crisis response. Knowing what’s being said about you on social media, in traditional media, by your employees, customers, and other stakeholders often allows you to catch a negative “trend” that, if unchecked, turns into a crisis. Likewise, monitoring feedback from all stakeholders during a crisis situation allows you to accurately adapt your strategy and tactics.
6. Identify and Know Your Stakeholders
Who are the internal and external stakeholders that matter to your organisation? The employees are your most important audience, because every employee is a PR representative and crisis manager for your organisation whether you want them to be or not! But, ultimately, all stakeholders will be talking about you to others not on your contact list, so it’s up to you to ensure that they receive the messages you would like them to repeat elsewhere.
7. Develop Holding Statements
While full message development must await the outbreak of an actual crisis, “holding statements,” messages designed for use immediately after a crisis breaks, can be developed in advance to be used for a wide variety of scenarios to which the organisation is perceived to be vulnerable, based on the assessment you conducted in Step 1 of this process.
The organisation’s Crisis Communications Team should regularly review holding statements to determine if they require revision and/or whether statements for other scenarios should be developed.
Post Crisis
8. Assess the Crisis Situation
If you’ve done all of the above first, it’s a “simple” matter of having the Crisis Communications Team on the receiving end of information coming in from your team members, ensuring the right type of information is being provided so you can proceed with determining the appropriate response.Assessing the crisis situation is, therefore, the first crisis communications step you can’t take in advance. If you haven’t prepared in advance, your reaction will be delayed by the time it takes your in-house staff or quickly hired consultants to run through steps 1 to 7.
9. Finalize and Adapt Key Messages
With holding statements available as a starting point, the Crisis Communications Team must continue developing the crisis-specific messages required for any given situation. The team already knows, categorically, what type of information its stakeholders are looking for. What should those stakeholders know about this crisis? Keep it simple. Have no more than three main messages that go to all stakeholders and, as necessary, some audience-specific messages for individual groups of stakeholders.
10. Post-Crisis Analysis
After the crisis, the question must be asked, “What did we learn from this?”
A formal analysis of what was done right, what was done wrong, what could be done better next time and how to improve various elements of crisis preparedness is another must-do activity for any Crisis Communications Team.
For more information, please get in touch with:
Avijit Ghosh,
Executive Director - Distribution Services
CESC
