Todd Stabelfeldt’s challenges during the blackout show holes in official response.

In the average home, electricity yields comfort and convenience – a toasty living room or a chunk-free glass of milk, among other undervalued luxuries.

But in the tidy abode of Todd Stabelfeldt, electricity meets grander needs; it is the source of all sustenance.

Quadriplegic since a gunshot wound paralyzed him in childhood, Stabelfeldt lives alone in the Island Homestead Apartments on Wyatt Way, where he has been for the past 10 years.

He is mostly self-sufficient. From his wheelchair, with a spoken word or a subtle movement of his chin, he is able to open doors, answer phones and turn on lights and appliances. His actions initiate from within, but only through the artifices of technology do they find physical expression.

That is, of course, until the power goes out, rendering lifeless the myriad gadgets that enable Stabelfeldt to go about his daily life.

Most vital for him following the recent winter wallop that began the night of Thursday, Dec. 14, was the loss of power to the breathing apparatus he must use while he sleeps. Electricity being his lifeline, he, like many of the island’s more vulnerable residents, could scarcely wonder away a week of darkness.

“I left Friday morning to stay with a friend in Poulsbo,” he said, noting that the battery back-ups that power his equipment are good for, at most, 20 hours. “I’m okay for a day or two, even if it gets cold. But after that I need to leave.”

Without power, he couldn’t return home until the following Friday. Along with being burdened by relocating, Stabelfeldt’s unexpected sojourn forced him to burn vacation hours at Cortex, the software company where he works.

Two weeks later, he still reflects on what, if anything, could be done better. His plight, he admits, is at the extreme end of the spectrum. But it has for him, and other islanders affected by the storm, raised questions about what level of service can reasonably be expected from the city, the power company, emergency responders and neighbors during trying situations. The storm response – or lack thereof, depending on one’s perspective – also has raised fears about whether Bainbridge is disaster-ready.

Among those asking questions are city officials, who some say did not respond swiftly enough. Mayor Darlene Kordonowy acknowledges those criticisms, but defended the city’s response.

“There were some things that could have been done differently,” Kordonowy said, adding that it was mostly small gaffes – like not providing updated information on the city’s voice message system – that made the city in some ways look “ill-prepared.”

Better communication, community education and the addition of an emergency operations consultant – a position shot down during the recent budget process – should be the city’s top priorities regarding emergency preparedness, the mayor said.

Also crucial is taking better stock of vulnerable residents like Stabelfeldt, and of available resources, like the names of doctors who live on the island and could help treat the injured during a future catastrophe.

Local officials will meet Jan. 18 to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in the city’s response to the storm. They will also look closely at how government and individuals can be better prepared for future storms and disasters.

A disaster?

Prior to the storm, efforts to improve the city’s emergency preparedness plan were ongoing.

Emergency manuals were recently updated to comply with standards and help ensure that federal money could compliment city efforts during a disaster.

Six city employees, including Kordonowy, spent a week over the summer at a seminar in Maryland, conducted by the Department of Homeland Security.

Training there included the simulation of a 6.9 earthquake. More than 70 Kitsap County officials also attended, important because the county Department of Emergency Management works closely with individual cities to execute emergency plans.

Other ideas, discussed but not yet implemented, have included cooperation with Bainbridge Island Television and local radio to help facilitate communication.

Still, though the scale of damage from the windstorm was minor compared to a true disaster, Kordonowy said it did expose flaws in the system.

“My biggest concern is finding better ways to help people help themselves,” she said. “We need to be much more active in that way than we have been.”

That includes reminding people how to turn off gas lines, and encouraging them to amass enough supplies to last for five days, rather than three, as was once widely considered appropriate.

Looking back, she said she should have acted sooner following the storm, but didn’t because it took time to determine how severe the situation was.

After the wind subsided Friday morning, the mayor visited a number of vulnerable spots on the island, including Island Homestead apartments, and was in regular contact with emergency responders and officials from Puget Sound Energy, who gave her updates every four hours.

One problem was gauging from PSE when power would actually be restored. Originally, she said, most power was expected to be back on Sunday.

When that didn’t happen, and she learned that some would be in the dark another four or five days, the city changed course. Crews went door to door distributing informational fliers.

A warming shelter was opened on Monday at St. Cecilia Catholic Church, providing meals and warmth for powerless residents until it closed Thursday when it was no longer needed.

Kordonowy stood by her decision not to activate an Emergency Operations Center that would have centralized communications and improved logistics, saying the situation didn’t warrant doing so.

“I would be very cautious about comparing this to a disaster,” she said. “Food and heat were in short supply, but the bridge wasn’t down. The ferries were still working.”

Traffic cops

Still, some are fearful that something more severe could incapacitate both.

“I’m really worried,” said Bob Fortner, of the citizen watchdog Bainbridge Resource Group. “While we might be prepared to manage a disaster in the short-term, we are woefully unprepared to manage one in the long-term.”

His main concern, like that of islander Ron Laes, who for seven years managed a federal emergency preparedness team in Hawaii, is the absence of an emergency operations consultant.

Both also stressed the need for individuals to prepare themselves adequately for future disasters, particularly in light of the limited resources available to government officials.

“I think the John Q. Publics everywhere look at it the same way,” Laes said. “They just don’t do enough to protect themselves.”

Without an emergency operations consultant, much of the island’s preparation duties fall on the local police and fire departments.

Deputy Police Chief Mark Duncan said officials are coordinating efforts, but taking the necessary precautions, like logging local resources, is labor intensive and will take time, no matter who’s in charge.

He said response to the storm by emergency workers was “adequate and appropriate” given the situation, and that during an actual disaster the police department would have used to the fullest its staff and resources.

Some, though, criticized police for choosing not to put traffic-directing officers at any of the four darkened intersections along state Route 305, which during the outage saw long backups.

“That’s not a realistic idea,” said Duncan, adding that the police department, which employs 22 officers, generally staffs two-and-a-half officers per shift.

“There are limited resources at every level,” Duncan said. “We can’t just stay at intersections because there are no lights. We have to be able to respond to all the normal things that are happening.

“It’s incumbent on drivers to behave appropriately in situations like that.”

Duncan said the biggest breakdown he noticed was in interagency communication.

Radios used by emergency crews, for example, operate on different frequencies than those used by PSE, making cooperation cumbersome. That caused problems when fire or city crews needed to ask for assistance from PSE line crews to clear down trees.

For PSE, the storm wreaked unprecedented havoc on transmission lines that feed local power, darkening huge swaths of Western Washington for as long as 10 days. In all, 700,000 PSE customers lost electricity.

Calling the storm “overwhelming,” PSE spokesperson Dorothy Bracken said the company did what it could to restore power as quickly as possible. But like Kordonowy, she conceded things could have been done to improve PSE’s response.

The company will have an internal meeting after the new year to determine what specific improvements should be made, but Bracken cited poor communication as PSE’s most glaring deficiency during the latest storm.

“We clearly need to get better and faster at providing customers with estimates as to when their power will be back on,” she said. “The main focus, of course, was in restoring power. Admittedly, making sure people were updated sometimes came in second place.”

No info

During and after the storm, some residents said they were frustrated by a system that seemed inconsistent and provided little current or accurate information.

Martha and Margaret Mitchell, who like Stabelfeldt spent a week in the dark at Island Homestead, said they called PSE regularly, but got few solid answers.

On one occasion, Mitchell said, the operator seemed to have no local knowledge, asking her to spell “Bainbridge” and to tell her what county it’s in. On another, a different operator told Mitchell that her power had been restored several hours earlier, even though she was calling from her still-frozen apartment.

“I understand it was a big storm and they’re doing the best they can,” Mitchell said. “But it seems like they could be more organized.”

Bracken said that in some cases, encounters like those experienced by the Mitchells could have been caused by employees who weren’t trained to deal directly with customers, but were forced into customer service roles because of the severity of the storm.

Another common complaint was that many neighborhoods or buildings, like Island Homestead, were without power for comparatively long periods, despite being located close to downtown.

Kordonowy said she too was surprised that so many areas near Winslow – many of which house elderly and vulnerable residents – stayed in the dark so long.

“That’s something we need to look in to,” she said. “Was it due to a problem in our building codes or a problem with the way the power company responded? I don’t yet know the answer to that question.”

Bracken said some mistakenly believe that downtown areas, because they house many important services, receive first priority from the power company during outages.

In actuality, however, power is restored first to sections of the grid that will impact the greatest number of people, a fact that sometimes leaves powerless pockets within a downtown area, even though most others may have their lights back on.

Bracken also said large concentrations of people, like apartments or condominiums, are more likely to blow transformers once power is restored, which is what happened in some cases on the island.

Count Stabelfeldt among those who thought living downtown would entitle him to first crack at electricity.

His next move, he said, is to check with his building manager about whether he can purchase a generator to prevent the next storm or, as many fear, major disaster, from denying him use of the instruments that afford him independence.

The alternative to that doesn’t sit well.

“I love it here,” he said, after a tour demonstrating the wall-to-wall ingenuity within his home. “I don’t want to live anywhere else.”

He stopped short of threatening to leave, and instead offered a thoughtful snippet from his own emergency preparedness assessment:

“Someone,” he said, “needs to do some retooling.”

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Coordinating chaos

During emergencies, the city has designated two spots – City Hall and the Phelps Road fire station – as potential emergency operations centers.

The goal of an EOC is to centralize the response operations being carried out by various agencies across the island. EOC’s can be opened by either the city or the county Department of Emergency Management. Leadership at an EOC depends on the nature of the emergency.

After the wind storm, city officials chose not to open a local EOC, but did ask the Red Cross to open a warming shelter at St. Cecilia, where residents could get meals and keep warm. Mayor Darlene Kordonowy said the city considered opening an overnight shelter, but decided it wasn’t needed.

“The warming shelter was worth doing,” she said. “But we thought most people would rather get a good meal and then stick it out at home.”