NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Emails obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates reveal internal communications from embattled Nashville Electric Service CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin before and during the January ice storm.
The storm knocked out power to 230,000 customers — some for nearly two weeks.
The hundreds of internal emails show Broyles-Aplin's mindset as the storm approached and unfolded.
Nashville Metro Council member Courtney Johnston said the emails reinforce her belief that the utility and its CEO were not prepared.
"We all lived through it. So we knew they were not prepared," Johnston said.
"She gets paid pretty well to be at the top of her game at all times and this to me was amateur hour," Johnston said.
Forecasts as early as the Wednesday before the storm were already warning about dangerous ice.
Broyles-Aplin's emails from that Wednesday show she was aware of the threat.
She canceled an out-of-town trip to a conference and wrote that we "could end up with a detrimental amount of ice" and that they were "planning to be in crisis mode this weekend."
By Saturday morning, as snow was falling across Nashville, she assured board members the utility was ready, writing, "We are hoping for the best and have planned for the worst" with "50 line crews checked in."
But on Sunday morning, as ice blanketed the city, Broyles-Aplin sent herself a series of quick emails — one of which questioned, "Time to ask for more help?"
By Monday afternoon, one of the five board members began raising concerns.
Board member Casey Santos emailed Broyles-Aplin and Vice President Brent Baker, warning that power could be out for a week or more.
"The numbers for restoration seem to not be moving very quickly," Santos wrote. "If we do the math, it will be 7-10 days before we have restored everyone."
It took nearly two weeks to fully restore power.
Johnston said people needed to be given some kind of timeline so they could make plans of their own.
"This is clearly going to be a long-term restoration effort. Let's please communicate that to people, and they really never did until the last few days of the storm," Johnston said.
"I just think they were paralyzed by fear of giving bad news," Johnston said.
The next morning, Santos remained concerned, emailing Broyles-Aplin to ask, "How many additional crews have we added, and are there more coming?"
Minutes later, Broyles-Aplin responded, "They made progress (with crews) overnight, but it has not met my expectations overall."
On Tuesday, Broyles-Aplin emailed the NES attorney asking "how to quickly get a contract" with a tree trimming contractor, writing, "how do we go about doing that?"
The attorney responded that "Tennessee law provides emergency procurement authority" and explained what steps should be taken.
Johnston said NES leadership should have known about those procedures before the storm hit.
"To be literally trying to figure out what the legal procedure of executing an emergency contract and identifying that contractor three days into an ice storm, four days into the overall storm is absolutely unacceptable," Johnston said.
By Thursday, Board Chair Anne Davis urged more updates, writing, "Address what areas are being targeted next and why. I'm sure you have that information, right?"
It came as Mayor Freddie O'Connell said he was frustrated by the utility's communication.
Suddenly, NES was no longer part of his daily news conferences.
Broyles-Aplin wrote to Davis, "I can brief you on how we ended up hosting our own press conference... The Mayor asked us to do it."
Minutes later, Davis — whose husband, Karl Dean, served as mayor during the 2010 flood — wrote back, "Well, if the mayor is not willing to take responsibility for daily or twice daily briefings, then I guess you all will have to do it."
Johnston disagreed with forcing NES to host its own press conferences, saying it sent the wrong message to the public.
"The visual separation showed conflict," Johnston said.
"What they saw, I think, was chaos and political separation, reputation management. And that's not what they are looking for," Johnston said.
In the end, the massive stack of emails reinforced Johnston's belief that changes are needed at NES.
State lawmakers have already called for Broyles-Aplin to be fired over the utility's poor performance during the storm.
When NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Johnston directly whether the CEO should keep her job, she was quick to answer.
"I don't think that she should keep her job and there's probably others that should lose their jobs over it as well," Johnston said.
Mayor O'Connell's Office issued the following statement in response to NES leaving the daily briefings.
"For the first four days of the storm, the mayor hosted daily media briefings with key emergency response partners, including NES. The mayor also provided numerous live interviews to local and national media outlets and shared updates via social media. By day four, the majority of questions about emergency response, understandably, were directed at NES. The public and press deserved to have full, direct access to NES leadership to directly address concerns from the community. We communicated to NES that the best course moving forward was for NES to host its own availability to allow the media additional access to their leadership. We also clearly communicated to them at multiple points that they were not meeting our expectations for communicating to the Mayor's Office or the public about power restoration timelines. We laid out our expectations and explained that until they had new information to communicate about anticipated restorations, they should continue to operate their own availability with the press.
By the fourth day, we also wanted to ensure that critical information about shelters, transportation, and other emergency needs were communicated and not lost in the presence of power restoration questions."
NES sent the following statement:
NES management routinely communicates with board members during outages to provide status updates, answer questions and determine where additional collaboration may be needed. We appreciate our board members' engagement during Winter Storm Fern which required an all-hands-on-deck response given the rapidly evolving conditions and declared state of emergency.
