NARUC Releases Disaster Management Guide for Consumers
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has published a guide for homeowners designed to help them understand the impact that a natural disaster might have on their utility services (gas, electric, water & telecommunications). It’s a great publication that should benefit utility companies simply by improving the accuracy of consumer expectations.
Overview of the NARUC Guide
The 71-page publication is entitled “Consumers and Catastrophes: Understanding the Impact to You, Your Family, and Your Utilities.” It covers the potential impact of events such as blizzards, chemical spills, ice storms, earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, mudslides, tornados, tsunamis, volcanos and forest fires, among others.
The publication’s uniqueness lies in its focus on how such events can impact utility services. For each type of disaster, NARUC details the specific ways it could affect utility services, mechanisms to get an early warning, how to prepare, and what to do before, during and after the event.
I think it’s a well-written, easy to understand document that should be required reading for anyone living in a high-risk area. Aside from the consumer benefit, it should also help utility emergency preparedness because better prepared residents can be expected to make better decisions and, subsequently, reduce any negative impact their decisions may have on the restoration efforts of both utilities and first responders.
Because of this “hidden” benefit, utility companies should consider proactively distributing the NARUC publication to their customers – or at least, repurpose sections of the document that are most relevant to the residents living in their service territories. In fact, I believe pushing this information – or any relevant information for that matter – to customers should be part of every utility’s emergency preparedness process.
Providing relevant information like the NARUC publication to local residents can be expected to reduce bad customer decisions that could negatively impact outage restoration. Given the relatively high benefits, and relatively low cost and effort, pushing this type of information to customers seems like a no-brainer for utility decision-makers.
