"Snowtober” on the East Coast has raised many questions about the managerial reliability of several major utilities. It is overwhelmingly evident that these power companies were ill-prepared for snowfalls ranging from eight to more than 12 inches of heavy wet snow so early in the season that trees still had almost all of their leaves. However, it is the exceptionally poor response to the disaster that is most disconcerting.
The storm struck a large swath of the northeast on Saturday, October 29, 2011, and I’m still without power a week later. Writing this column gives me reason to look back and reflect not just on how unprepared we all were, but how much worse the response to the disaster has been.