i'm joined by my colleague adam daisho selectman and phyllis marshall the interim town administrator in the reason we're having this meeting today she wanted to discuss the  heat wave in the brownout and what happened yesterday we also want to talk about the school closing and what the outlook is for that i've asked the police chief the fire chief surge in the i want to ferment and then we went right on to generation power and then we start to receive a lot of phone calls that there were a lot of outages in town so i notified when i talked to the lights upon which instructs me that there was a power outage in town they were trying to get to the bottom of it so we just feel to feel that the many calls and we just told people that the lights upon it was working on it and they would get to us as soon as they knew what the problem was and we just assisted the police and fire department with whatever they needed they asked us for some stop signs for some intersections or out of power and that's what we basically did from the d p w standpoint ok if john is coming we'll wait for it for him to tell us about how they decided to handle it with regard to the schools david and richard could you join us please so david when and how did you find out about again at the party part of we noticed the clip we want on emergency power generator started and then we started receiving calls to respond to common oxide detectors that had gone off during that time we also learned that the high poll the high school and the middle school had gone it had lost power a school generator came on function properly the middle school generator came on but it did not transfer a load so it did not know the lights came on the generator was running but no lights came on at which time when any of these emergency systems hit the building and it's going to be a prolonged outage actually have to evacuate the building because that is their failsafe to get out of the building that's what those systems are in place for ok we're doing ok just have a seat there john could you join us up here we're we're kind of unfolding this and purpose of this is to inform the public about how these things were you know when they happened that that's why we're doing this so we started with phyllis john and phyllis noticed the lights blinking then mike gave us a report that he had the same issue over in the home or building and i didn't know you had a generator over there mike but i guess they do you have a generator at the home or buildings up critical just critical stuff with the generator running no you were just describing some alarms that went off at the schools and at the at the substation also i want to mention jim you'll be up here in a minute but it's ok you guys did a good job i think oh we're all grateful for the lights coming on tomorrow night or last night but the there's some confusion in the community about which substation in the substation that you were called t was the hidden ger substation is that correct correct on here just straight then that is the one that it's not it's not the new substation it's an old substation which is next to the softball field right right i'm so everybody hopefully is clear on that so we responded also there for reported fire and the transformer which was quickly remediate it with the help of belmont like and again we responded to about a dozen other calls related to the power outage ok so we've been joined by jim palmer the general manager of the light department and we're just trying to recount for the public out how these things unfolded so far so good so what happened chief when you got the call when did called station three but they had your street station so what do you do you send you send a crew over there you know we know what was going on we had heard that there was something going on with the transformer and we do have some work going on because of all the preventive maintenance that we do on the stations you leave the system protection work to as designed and everything opened off and prevented any substantial damage to the transformer so that was lucky for us otherwise these guys would have been fight and you have pretty pretty nasty fire over there is it will kill piece of equipment in new york you're prepared to do that if it happens obviously  control there which fire trucks did you send them from where from the headquarters or from lee it was from c three from headquarters the engine in the ladder from station to went in just three  immediately like i said the temple on frontage road had an issue so the rescue when the other engines headed that way we had a medical the same time which the assistant chief took so we were getting a little there there's there was an explosion you do know fire then what happened that point we assessed the recess the damage to make sure that it's safe for them and then when it worked and at that point once we determine what the problem was we could isolate the isolate the problem and then start to switch around the globe so that we had to come up with a plan to switch around this particular  circumstance that we were dealing with and that's what we were doing at the beginning of it and then we you know we quickly picked up the high school and that was the easiest one to get them first and then we went out to the next critical loads and it was work school was out so we went up to one brick school and then we went after the other general ok oem so now let's talk to richard the chief of police what did you do what happens to the police department when this happens building but then we just continued to answer the call and whatever we needed in wherever we needed our resources deployed we did a number of intersections went down the proper lights were able to send again as michael said earlier get  scene on duty at the time so obviously and so we didn't weren't sure how long it was gong going that's a continual assessment of the process we tried to get the word out as quick as we can to the public and we did a situations as you know a lot of times we just keep on moving forward yeah the reason again the reason i want to have this meeting are so that the public under stood what what kind of things we do know when the when the third of the houses chief at the d p w reached out to belmont light and started to get a picture of what actually the cause because what we needed to find out what the cause was and what the potential timeframe was so we could start to use that to guard our work as to whether we would dismiss students relocate students or keep students in place under whatever circumstances we found ourselves in for a period of time now is this something that you practice because unlike the rest of us you have four thousand two hundred students we do and how many teachers you have about five hundred so you have almost five thousand people that you have to figure out what to do with and there's a blackout correct we have a we actually have a protocol that try to make the best decisions and we use that as a guide do you talk to the principals or do you talk to other other people at each school how i reached out to all the principals and i actually went to all three schools in a prioritized order in then if an elementary school was not involved in you you let them stay in place so we had no we had no concern at the burbank at the wellington or at the butler so we let their day happen as usual  high school is a little different we have students they can go home if they need to go home so they were arab evacuated the temperature was in the ninety's they had been outside for a period of time afterwards so you had them leave the building that i didn't know and leave the building where did they go they were on the front lawn for a period of time and they were dismissed from school what about one twenty p m and for the high school students do you have to make calls to the parents are they old enough at that point so what we did from a comprehensive standpoint we assess the butler i'm sorry we assessed the high school the cherry in that one book at the same time we work with the police department to do a reverse nine when one because we didn't think we had access to our own communication tools at that time when we did find out that we did have remote access we used our own tool to provide that update we let parents know that there was a loss of power in both the middle school and high school that the high school students were dismissed a certain time and the buses were being called early to the middle school but we were dismissing them early but we had the prosecutor up early because we had to let them out last by cannot so that that proceeded took a little longer they've actually left that really in the time they were in the building and when the baby was being they remained in the building because we felt that that was the safest option that buying time is there is there a generator did what we did is that we had them in to stay in place the ministry to team goes in to stay in place where they communicate by walkie talkie they probably have like ten administrators and educators on walkie talkie to coordinate getting students to where they need to be and they stay in place until they get the directive to move or not move when we find out the window of time that we're dealing with and as time goes by decisions are made by the time we had a feel for the power coming back on maybe sometime around two or so we decided to keep the students call the buses get them there early have the buses show up at two o'clock and begin that dismissal process so they were probably in the building for about an hour before we were able to get them out get the walk is out get the bus of students out normally dismissed of three or to twenty five to two others who is very close friends you know and it took a step long to do that process yes buses were sent also early to the high school so some students walked in buses to drive home the student to take the bus for the win brooke community that we're thankful for the team approach that we always are able to partner with the d p w facilities belmont lyta whether it's belmont water a fire police and then all these groups come together within minutes and have decisions made within a half an hour to an hour and the communication starts to go out to the public so we do this on a regular basis we meet about and talk about these process decisions on a regular basis and yesterday it worked and we're thankful that it did so we appreciate everybody at this table for the work that they did on behalf of the schools and the safety of the children and we didn't like it was there over there there again a lot of tears we were in contact with everybody in this room in terms of town departments and so i will always foll up these types of events like i do with snow days with a thank you you know to the community recognizing everybody at this table and so so we we feel comfortable that when these things happen no matter how unique they are they fit into a general area of response that everybody in this room is generally aware of the communication process is what we do so and i teachers in our educators who are in the ministry she was about helpful as  open school today whether or not we could have a person to be the switch for the emergency lighting just in case the regular power went down in consultation with the fire chief we decided to cancel school today we belmont light we had already made the decision to communicate school was going to end of regular time and there was no after school care what you make that decision you have to stay the stay the course you know so even if the lights came on people would say well why didn't you let me keep my out school program or what she send out today and then we're hoping to be able to switch back to normal power sometime overnight and we're paying i'm assuming for the cost of that truck absolutely what i had that may be covered by insurance an palmer i'm going to say because there are two gems i spoke we spoke yesterday i guess about that if we get some information about when will this type of thing be prevented it's obvious that with this entire substation project this type of thing isn't isn't going to happen however we're not done yet  the substation project but there is some point where the sub new substation will be powering the town in the sort of thing wouldn't happen but when do you think we're going to get to that point that's correct the right now what we're looking as a new substation doesn't solve this problem the new substation is part of the solution to this problem the vasta planned you know i briefly discussed at the town meeting is basically the voltage conversions that need to happen in town i ought to transfer all of the load to the new substation and that's that's the master plan which takes first homes to get out of station one text about five years the second half it takes for another five years we can accelerate that so it's who might need system so that can now happen of the new substations in place and that's what the master plan is all about at this particular problem this is like our worst nightmare is on a heat wave in june when school is still in session because everybody still home we had a heat wave in july you can sometimes make it through and wouldn't be as concerned but we've always our backup plans to bring in generation in this type of situation and this time we we had to execute that but  that's that's really the the long and the shot of it is you know now we're set up to do the voltage converges that need to be done in town in order to get the load off of those stations if we could just back up per second there are three sub so does blair upon the new substation talk to any of those three substations now we don't have and connected we're actually we were preparing to start cutting whole load to the new substation on the twenty first of june and that's when we were announcing that we're going to have prevented this and so we planned on starting on the twenty first where i want to be an office that station three was the first one to be cut over to the new substation and we're going to do so you're saying that ten years it could be so we have to muddle through or we're going to get to the point i think where in there where i think that you know yeah i think that over a period of time you know within the next five years or so you're going to see a lot of these voltage conversions are going to take place and the risk is going to subside quite a bit each time each day i'm guessing and this risk is all this is always a risk because these stations when they were built back in one nine hundred sixty eight they built them as what they refer to as a single lender station one transformer it's not a design that anybody uses they all use double lender's usually have two transformers and you have a tie switch in the middle so you lose one transforming of the other one as a backup on your station has to transfer one across the street that's two transformers with those two little ones on the outside of town there are just one transformer so we rely on all system ties within within the town and you know you start overloading those you know whether they are engineers going crazy with calculations to make didn't burn the down these guys were witness to that to so so if you switch over on the twenty ninth let's say you're doing the switch over from hitting your station is that going to then somewhat lessen the likelihood of another blackout a those will be in really good shape and then anybody else gets fed off of that substation is still going to be prone to the same as if you go right up right but that you know like you said our equipment is in pretty good shape this is just the problem with this one here because it's a combination of heat related in age so it's really nothing that we could have done to prevent that let me ask a guess the question of why certain areas of town were the five hundred houses down i guess you know the road in other areas that were the lower the last one to come online yeah i had an interesting conversation with a gentleman that stopped by the office and we we had a very good discussion about why his neighborhood because he asked that question and  you know and really what it came down to was that was the last part of the load that the left what the last pocket of part of the blow that we that we went to switch and we could be doing with it because we didn't have the capacity so at that point being discussed  amongst us as a team you know do we you know do we try to shut off power to a different part of town to give these folk couple hours of lights out and we just you know leave matters for the ar to the generations up it was a tough decision to make but we made the decision to just wait and get the generation online because it would have caused all of that a lot of how did you know that it was coming up at ten o'clock or you you you are there i guess there's a contingency plans first of various scenarios and we're aware there are contingency plans that were written and followed and they work because this is a good chance to sort of that this is a continued plan that we have been working on internally equipment to that's why we built a new substation because we had a passenger shot full and as a result of having this capacity shortfall we had plans in place if we lost a wind coming in or if we lost a transformer like this and the plan always to bring in backup generation which we did so that's the that's the plan that we came up with was to bring bring in that is the plan include something like if you're getting to the point where you have the last load maybe rotate the neighborhood so doesn't always get no as though that wasn't the well no we do load relief switching and we monitor all of our feeders to see if we can add any more and that was a situation we ran into we had already called the generators anyhow but we as were doing all of our locally switching and it took the took us till almost seven o'clock to get the other five hundred customers the next chunk of five hundred customers up which was like got pregnant you're probably your area and when we picked that area like it better when i have when all systems up i've experienced this type of situation over the years that i've worked here for ten years that i've been here i've seen this happen before the pain of a lost a piece of equipment right now so having a piece of equipment  really challenging but i can tell you the team that we had in place last night at belmont light those are the disciplines that we had in place that we were handling all the outside communications with the social media i website was being updated we had i t right there to hand were out there were can safely to get lights back on and i just i just have one more question for you would be a guess for the other department has you feel and feel it's not did you all feel that the contingency plans and the operation of the department working together that everything works need to and so that worked out well we had a contingency for other for use of the high school as needed if that would require as a cooling so yeah if that if that issues continued so we had  been a good explanation of what happened i do have one other question and then there are some people in the public who are attending want to give them a chance to ask questions or comment as david said if this had continued overnight one thing i was wondering about was do we know who's in that pocket that dark in other words do we know if there's people that are elderly or at home how  does that how does that work or you know and let's say you open a you open a cooling center you go get somebody if you how do you how do we know you know who's there oh i think we were sitting there  our planning stage yesterday we were talking about these things and what we would need to do if in fact it continued and that being said we were ready to do that ok we're ready to do whatever we need to do to get people for and so i just want to echo that you know this type of situation is like a lot of the emergencies that we might have for him i mean in the winter for example snow storms we have a similar way that we communicate about these incidents so it's similar in that way and as i said there are lists of people who are identified at risk and public safety reaches out we often provide names of people who might who are need to be identified i just want to say we constantly in terms of the heat related illnesses or conditions we constantly do education we publicize that if people don't have ac now obviously this is not a power outage two but a heap issue that we have we purchase fans for people during those heat waves and we want people to know about that and that from time to time we are open late if there is a heat wave so as a i was just up the street and we we didn't get power until just a few minutes before ten last night we have a lot of infants and we have some elderly folks in our neighborhood we actually are one of the most active neighborhoods from a community and support perspective i have to say that this event was managed tremendously from somebody who's had to deal with crisis communications never life and death but i've had to deal with a lot of crisis communications you guys did marvelously in your tactical perspectives i do have some comments and kind of advice or at least maybe reflection on the communications protocol as a communications professional typically when there is something that is operational and that is an emergency you tag somebody who is the liaison who can then be able to communicate to the general public as quickly as possible i recognize that you have the reverse nine one one that you that you had done and these blast phone calls we have vonage which is voice over ip so anybody who doesn't have a landline doesn't get those calls further jim i respect that that your social media was updated i didn't know that you had social media platforms until somebody else mentioned it the next star dot com we is how we kind of keep each other informed and connected further your website is not mobile friendly so your website is not optimized for anybody on mobile which if you're at home and you have no power that's the only way you're going to get to the internet so i highly recommend you look at something that is optimized for mobile because you could see that there were updates but you couldn't see what the updates were there was no way to access that so we were left really in all honesty in the dark in every last way we had some people with infants who rented a hotel room for four hundred bucks a night at the marriott residence in an arson our narasimha street we have others who are elderly and or have pets who they were concerned about who also rented hotel rooms again four hundred dollars a night because they had no idea what was happening the phone line crashing is a horrible disaster and i'm terribly sorry for that but the police department and i never even thought of calling the fire department but the police department didn't have as much information as i think you think they did or maybe the people in the non emergency lines so these are just kind of in reflection things that in the future we can be informative and dr phil and i know that you have your list of district and parents i'm talking about those who are not in the schools that were impacted and also those who may not have children in the school system position i just wanted to say one more thing from my desk in that is with regard to this idea of a ten year plan out i'm in jim i don't want the public to think that it's going to take ten years for us to fix everything the the idea is that in two thousand and twelve when the substation project was approved the amount was experiencing brownouts at that point in time because the voltage literally wasn't high enough to come in to support the computers and all the different applications so this this substation has been built and it's going to be hooked up to the existing substations as part of that the original project but then what you have to do is you have to change the distribution lines which are the lines that in our neighborhoods underground but in other neighborhoods it's in the air you have to change those lines to be able to handle the the increase of all ages that so when you when you say ten years or five years we're going to hook the blair pond substation up to the existing three station correct and you're going to do that not in five years you're going to do that or do that about one in about a month ok so i want everybody to understand that blair pond is going to be hooked up to the three substations but then what happens next is what takes the time because what you'll eventually do is retire the three substations so the only have they are parked right right but in order to do that you have to change the transmission lines between blair but no you won't have to change just a distribution line just the distribution  logic i guess for which which circuits go first and which areas go first and the one thing to remember too is that what's factored in are some assumptions but some of it is actual data from lines that we've replaced so you know since i've been here for the last ten years and then before my ten year involvement in the team at belmont light has been replacing cable and equipment with higher voltage rated it was in to a place to be simple replacements of the disruption to be trucks in the field you know can we get it done soon or you know if you really had to talk it really comes down to how critical it is to get it done and you know obviously as the equipment ages it may it's energised now you were going to hook up the number three on june twenty first now you're not probably not going to do that by june yeah i was going to be some of the yes some of the small boats on june twenty first and twenty ninth is going to be it was dean and then within a month the that and another time so i'd like to sanction each of you and all of you in adam our conversation last night it's not necessarily my place to thank everybody but i wanted to have this meeting today to let the public know that everybody's on board we have a plan and we have a plan that's even that goes beyond this if the situation gets worse yes look at ok yeah i'd like to