Hurricane Isaac Power Outage Impacts and Restoration

AbstractIn August 2012, Hurricane Isaac made landfall twice in Louisiana. Cumulatively, over 1 million customers lost electricity as a result of the hurricane, some for more than 10 days. As a disaster, Hurricane Isaac is relatively unique because of the opportunity to largely isolate impacts and decisions directly associated with the electricity outage and restoration from cascading impacts related to direct flood or wind damage. Louisiana emergency managers, business representatives, and public officials were interviewed to develop and analyze a case study of the outage and restoration event. Interviewees were asked about (1) the significant impacts from the outage, (2) what (if any) lasting effects would result from the outage, (3) the relative performance of power restoration, (4) the effectiveness of communication between stakeholders, and (5) factors influencing the public and political perception of restoration performance. Other collected data included content from news media, government documents...