Insight from the Trenches: Rich Hobson

Both the Mid-Atlantic Mutual Assistance Group and the Southeastern Electric Exchange Mutual Assistance Group began conducting conference calls once daily a week in advance and at least twice daily as Hurricane Isabel got closer. Detailed activity logs were developed each day detailing the dates and times of calls, the current forecast at the time of each call, and the resources each team member had available for assistance as well as details of any requests for assistance being made.

The same detail was given to the activity logs for each conference call with weather forecasters. When the time came to write the final storm report, all the information from these activity logs made the job of reconstructing the timeline of events for the report much less of an onerous task.