An Editorial Profile: Cape Coral, Florida
| Life after Wilma: Business as Usual | |||
While Wilma left behind a trail of debris stretching from Marco Island on the Gulf Coast to Fort Lauderdale on the Atlantic Ocean, one thing it didn't leave behind was lots of Cape Coral residents and businesses in the dark because of extended power outages. In fact, while electric utility companies were scrambling on the East Coast of Florida to restore power more than a week after the Category 3 storm, Lee County Electric Cooperative — the utility that serves the Cape — had virtually every home and business back on line in less than 72 hours. How did they do it? Easy, says Karen Ryan, an executive with LCEC. They were prepared. One year earlier, Hurricane Charley and its Category 2 winds blew down many trees and power lines throughout Cape Coral. The lessons learned from that fierce storm were put to good use. "We fared very well following Hurricane Wilma," Ryan says. "We have an aggressive maintenance program. We inspect our lines twice a year and look for potential outage areas and repair them before an outage occurs. "After Charley, we basically rebuilt the system," she added. "In many areas, it was a brand new infrastructure. In Cape Coral, we had only 7,500 people without power after Wilma. We learned some lessons from Charley and were able to implement them." LCEC's first response to Wilma was to send out 500 work crews to inspect and assess the damage. "We started with the major infrastructure, and then we went to the smaller transformers," Ryan says. "About 98 percent of all LCEC customers, including many residents and businesses in the harder-hit Everglades City and Marco Island areas, were restored in less than a week." Ryan explains that LCEC redesigned its power distribution system years ago to be a radial system — with power going in one way and out another — to ensure maximum power reliability. "We designed it to be a loop system," she notes. "If there is an outage, we can loop the power around the area." Ryan says LCEC also supports local businesses by assigning a dedicated account executive to every commercial and industrial building project. "This key account executive works very closely with the city of Cape Coral on a daily basis and coordinates all communications on economic development projects," says Ryan. "This executive then goes to our engineers and makes sure we can deliver what is needed." At LCEC, that person is Trish Lassiter. "Even though she is on the payroll of LCEC, she supports the city and its economic development office," notes Ryan. "Many days, she is at City Hall all day." Lassiter even gets involved in the planning of industrial parks. By engaging her on the front end, LCEC is better equipped to meet the needs of expanding companies, added Ryan. "We see an increased interest in potential employers coming to the Cape and requesting information on potential building sites," Ryan says. "When I first started here, we averaged about 2,000 new customers a year. This year, we already have 9,000 new customers. They are bringing a lot of business to the area." |
