WATCH: Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines revisits what went right and wrong from Toronto’s ice storm one year ago.
TORONTO – Toronto Hydro is confident its communications centre will now be able to withstand the hundreds of thousands of calls it similarly received a year ago when a devastating ice storm crippled its telephone lines leaving many in the dark about when their power would be restored.
“We had 128,000 phone calls on the first day,” said Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines during an interview on Global’s The Morning Show. “It just simply overwhelmed the system.”
Haines says Toronto Hydro has beefed up its telephone lines with a new computerized system that would avoid last year’s mess.
“Today, if the storm happened, you would be able to get through to Toronto Hydro and register your outage on a voice response system,” said Haines.
The force of the storm downed trees and hydro lines, left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power for days and stalled road and air travel.
VIDEO: Given the crippling nature of the storm and how much it cost, Cindy Pom reports on what the city and Toronto Hydro have done to ensure a different outcome should another storm hit?
Haines said customers can now report an outage on their mobile phones in case of an emergency.
“You can get yourself linked, get yourself ready, should there be another storm you can push a button and let us know,” he said.
Toronto Hydro commissioned an independent panel to look at its performance during the storm and discovered a significant communications gap with its customers.
However, Haines said crews spent much, if not all, of their holidays working to restore power in the frigid temperatures.
“One of my proudest moments was to see all of our employees working around the clock,” he said. “Nobody grumbled. Nobody stopped. Nobody said this is my Christmas.”
Toronto Hydro estimated the total cost of restoring power to nearly 300,000 customers following December’s ice storm at $12.9 million.
“Operational the system really worked as it was supposed to,” said Haines. “We have various training and practices we do for emergency response, all those system worked as they were supposed to.”
Comments