Mutual assistance, a hallmark of the electric power industry, has characterized successful responses to major incidents and disasters for decades. It draws on voluntary partnerships that allow impacted electric companies to access specialized equipment and skilled workers from unaffected companies to restore power safely and quickly. It is essential to restoration planning and is used regularly by investor-owned electric companies, public power utilities, and electric cooperatives across the nation. Over time, the use of mutual assistance has evolved and matured to meet the changing nature and growing scale of the threats our industry faces. Hurricane Katrina (which devastated my state of Louisiana in 2005) and Superstorm Sandy (which struck the Northeast in 2012) showed that severe regional incidents can stress our mutual assistance networks beyond regional capabilities. Following those storms, it was clear our industry needed to examine and strengthen our approach for supporting major restoration efforts.
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