NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A 16-page preliminary report released late Friday afternoon revealed NES failed on multiple fronts to prepare for January's ice storm.
The review highlights a lack of leadership and inadequate emergency planning.
Nearly half of all NES customers lost power during the event.
More than 230,000 people were impacted, and power was not fully restored for more than two weeks.
The NES board hired an independent firm to conduct an after-action review.
The utility did not plan ahead to get repair crews on standby despite predictions of heavy ice.
However, the report states the forecast of freezing rain should have been a sign of the "potential need for additional crews."
Unlike other utilities, NES did not have a model to estimate how many crews it would need.
The report states this resulted "in a delayed request for resources and a slower overall response."
"We all lived through it. So we knew they were not prepared," Council member Courtney Johnston said last month.
Johnston has said NES leadership should be fired.
Because NES did not have a plan to bring on crews after the storm, the report found the utility was in a "passive position of being resource takers" of whatever they could find.
The report also found NES's overall Emergency Response Plan "lacked detail," and there was "a less than a clear view of the chain of command."
The emergency plan was designed for an outage of 50,000 customers, but this event was nearly five times larger.
The areas hit hardest by the storm had the least tree trimming.
The after-action review states that NES recognized the lack of tree trimming "was a contributor to outages," but it praised NES for becoming more aggressive after the storm.
As NewsChannel 5 Investigates reported during the storm, NES did not use all of its tree trimming budget last year.
NES has not explained why it was so far behind on tree trimming.
The report blasted NES's communication throughout the crisis, stating it gave "inconsistent updates" and there was "no clear communications leadership."
It states that NES was not prepared to calculate an estimated time of when power would be restored, even though it is a standard practice in the utility industry.
The report now becomes part of the discussion about possible changes at NES.
