Power Failure - Risks? - R+V Versicherung

Power Failure - Risks?
Roger Gomm QPM
Fellow of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management

•Introduction
•Definition
•What is the risk?
•Causes
•Examples
Presentation
•Impact on a major city – London?
•Conclusions

Definition:
A power outage - power cut, blackout or power
failure, is a short or long-term loss of the
electric power to an area.
When the lights go out

Risk Matrix
• Governments are responsible for the safety and
security of the population they are elected to
serve. As part of good governance they develop a
national risk process that records the potential
hazards; natural, accidents and malicious acts. A
risk matrix is used to identify threats e.g.
terrorism, cyber attack, disorder and crime.
• Where would a power outage sit on this matrix?
• Generally agreed - High impact but Low
probability – so why bother planning?

High impact – examples:
• 9 th November 1965 – blackout North and north eastern America – 30 million impacted, without electricity for
up to 12 hours.
• 11 th March 1999 – blackout South and south eastern Brazil – 97 million people impacted
• 14/15 th August 2003 – blackout North and north eastern America – 55 million impacted
• 28 th August 2003, London - blackout, affecting an area from central London to south London, most of London
Underground and commuter trains. The report of the London Assembly: "Although power was restored in 30
minutes, the resulting chaos lasted well into the night".
• 28 th September 2003 - blackout all across Italy for 12 hours – 55 million impacted, 110 trains were reported to
have been brought to a standstill across the country - trapping thousands of people.
• 29 th November 2004 – Spain experienced five blackouts over 10 days impacting on 2 million people.
• 18 th August 2005 – blackout Java, Indonesia – 100 million people impacted
• 4 November 2006 parts of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, France and Portugal - 15 million households were
left without power! The root cause was an overload triggered by the German electricity company E.ON
switching off an electricity line over the river Ems to allow the cruise ship to pass through safely.
• 20 th July 2009, power was cut to around 100,000 homes in the areas of South East London and North Kent, UK,
after vandals deliberately caused a fire near a cable installation, power supplies were cut to around half of the
homes for around 4 days, whilst other homes were given 3 hour allocations of power followed by 6 hours "off
• 10 th November 2009 – blackout Central, south and south eastern Brazil and all Paraguay – 87 million people
impacted. Thousands of passengers were stranded as trains came to a halt and buses failed to cope with the
volume of passengers. There were widespread reports of road accidents as street lighting and traffic lights
failed.

9 th September 2011, southern USA
6 th April 2012, London

30 th & 31 st July 2012 – Pakistan and
India

Impact and probability – the risk!
•High impact – agreed!
•But is it Low probability or Medium
or High probability?

2011
• 2 February, Texas, forced outages at two major coal-fired power plants and high electricity demand
due to cold weather caused rotating blackouts affecting more than one million customers.
• 3 February, a cyclone hit communities in Queensland, Australia. 170,000 homes lost electricity.
• 4 February, at least eight states in north-eastern Brazil suffered from a major blackout from around
midnight to 4 a.m. It is estimated that 53 million people were affected. Major cities were completely
without out of power.
• 22 February, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the city of Christchurch, NZ damaging large parts of
Orion's sub-transmission and distribution network. Over 80 percent of the city (approximately
160,000 customers) lost power following the quake
• 24 March, nuclear catastrophe following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan – loss of 11% of
country's total power – significant impact
• 30 June, Chennai, India suffered a major power outage affecting many parts of the city for more
than 15 hours
• 11 July, Cyprus a half-week power outage, affected all cities on Greek part of the island after blast
near Vassilikos power plant
• 11 July, the Chicago, USA area was hit by a large windstorm which knocked out power to over
850,000.
• 23 July, failure of a glass insulator caused an outage of most of Northern Saskatchewan for about 4
hrs .
• 27–28 August, Hurricane Irene caused over five million power outages in USA.
• 8–9 September, power failure affected parts of California and Arizona, as well as parts of northwestern
Mexico. Over five million people were affected
• 24 September, nine million people in north and central Chile were affected for at least two hours
• In late October, heavy snow storm on the east coast of the USA caused over two million power
outages. Some residents of Connecticut and western Massachusetts were without electricity for
over seven days.

Causes – overview
• Climate change – storms, lightning, floods, cold/heat waves – often
leads to increased demand
• Earthquake – can lead to failure of production, e.g. 12 th March 2011,
tsunami that hit Japan
• Solar storm – the sun may produce violent solar storms or mass
ejections which have the ability to generate a electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) could shut down all electronic devices!
NASA High risk date 21 st December 2012
• Mega cities – increased demand – India
• Lack of investment, aging infrastructure
• Increased volatility of solar and wind power can interrupt transmission
• Human error – Europe 2006
• Terrorism
• Cyber attack – UK Security Services recently warned “credible threats
to cyber security of an unprecedented scale, diversity and complexity”.

Reality - Blackout risks on the increase
• Short term power blackouts are experienced frequently
on a local or regional level around the world, caused by
natural catastrophe events like earthquakes, storms,
floods or heat waves, societies are not familiar with
large scale, long-lasting, disruptive power blackouts.
• Traditional scenarios only assume blackouts for a few
days and losses seem to be moderate, but if we are
considering longer lasting blackouts, which are most
likely from space weather or coordinated cyber or
terrorist attacks, the impacts on society and economy
might be significant

Consider the consequences of a power
outage on a major city - London

London
• Facts and figures;
• 610 square miles or 1,579 km2
• Divided in to 33 Boroughs
• Greater London has a population of about 8
million inhabitants, more than 12 million live in
its metropolitan area
• Over 1.5 million commute into London daily for
work
• Over 50 hospitals
• Emergency Services – police, fire and ambulance

London
• The city is one of the world's leading business
and financial centres
• Centres for politics, education, entertainment,
media, fashion and the arts.
• Located around London are five major
international airports, one of the largest aviation
hub in the world.

London

Travel – workers and tourists immediately
impacted, do not forget some trains may be
stuck in tunnels.
Emergency services respond – incident
management processes in place.

Tactical – Incident Management
•Initial response from the police, fire and
ambulance.
•The police will activate a Strategic
Coordination Centre (SCC), which comprises
the organisations essential for the immediate
response, for example, the emergency
services, health advisory team, and the
military.

• Car travel – traffic flow – traffic lights
fail, drivers may become more
aggressive, increased risk of collisions
and injury. Petrol stations may not be
able to dispense fuel – panic!
Tactical
• Banking & ATMs – will not be
able to dispense cash

Tactical
• Communications –
– Cell phones whilst they have a
battery will function, but they
require a relay system usually
a tower which needs power!
– Lan (phone lines) may work
for a limited period
– Local radio station- require
power and a relay system
– Business transactions

• Running Water – does it require a
pumping station to maintain
pressure?
• Heating/Cooling of homes
• Sewage removal and processing –
requires power to treat!
Tactical
• Refrigeration (both residential and
commercial) – require power – think
about food and medication
• Restaurants and Food preparations
• Grocery Shopping - Grocery Shopping
- large stores long ago shifted to a
Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery system, and
received shipments nearly daily. Cold
items without refrigeration will spoil
quickly. Ability to process payments
other than cash. Ability to know what
to charge for a product, as prices are
less frequently marked on products.
Lighting and climate control.

Tactical
• Mail Delivery - Some services, such as some smaller
pharmacies, receive some of their product using mail and
package delivery.
• General Healthcare - Many hospitals, emergency care
facilities and larger medical centres have a backup power
source; however the average local general practitioner,
specialist or dentist does not.

Strategic Issues
• UK Government would become involved fairly
quickly – opening of COBR
• Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) is a crossdepartmental
crisis committee that is formed to
respond to emergencies.
• A key priority in the response to an incident is the
need to communicate with the public and offer
regular updates via the media.
• Public safety is the number one priority.

Strategic Issues
• Most critical systems such as hospitals, first responder
facilities, water and sewage systems and stock exchanges
have backup power generation in place. However, these
typically have only enough fuel for several hours to a
maximum of a few days.
• Immediately after a blackout, it is not possible to
purchase any goods without cash as no electronic
payment is possible.

Strategic Issues
• Governments have typically, however, implemented
emergency fuel storages to keep most critical
facilities alive for several weeks up to a month.
• The 2003 blackout illustrated that after 3 to 6 hours
without power most fuel stations and the refineries
had to close down, leaving the public without fuel for
cars or backup generators as the pumps did not
operate.

Strategic Issues
• After one month with no electrical power, water,
transportation, emergency services, critical
manufacturing, and chemical sectors can face
widespread outages within the affected region. The loss
of water systems due to a power outage leads to many
cascading effects. Hospitals, schools, nursing homes,
restaurants, and office buildings all rely on water to
operate. Water is used for drinking, sanitation, and
heating and cooling systems in those facilities.
• Many manufacturing operations either use water as an
ingredient in their processes or rely on wastewater
systems to remove and process their manufacturing
waste.

Strategic Issues
•Fire fighters depend on water to carry out
their emergency response, and access to safe
water is necessary for providing mass care
services and preventing the spread of disease.
•Without electricity most heating systems do
not operate. During winter typical homes can
cool to below freezing level within few days. It
must be expected that people will try to heat
their homes using open fires, leading to many
homes burning while there is no water for
emergency response teams.

Risk Mitigation
• The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is an essential
part of any organisation’s response planning.
• It sets out how the business will operate
following an incident and how it expects to return
to ‘business as usual’ in the quickest possible
time afterwards.
• Have they considered a power failure - the
business impact and do they have a disaster
recovery plan?
• Will they seek insurance to cover loss?

Conclusion - power failure
•Likelihood - increasing
•Consequences – potential loss of life and
significant economic loss
•Risk – underestimated, expect it to increase in
frequency and severity
•Risk Mitigation – cost and responsibility

ANY
QUESTIONS ?

Thank you
Roger Gomm
Email: rgomm@msn.com
Web: http://www.rogergomm.com/
LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/roger-gomm-qpm-ficpem/24/b32/939