BPA volunteers aid Typhoon Mawar restoration efforts in Guam 

With Typhoon Mawar gaining strength and the island of Guam bracing for a potential direct hit, three BPA employees headed toward the storm in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s prestaging of power restoration efforts.

The super typhoon was anticipated to be the strongest storm to hit the U.S. territory of around 150,000 people in more than 60 years. When it made landfall, Mawar engulfed the island in darkness and barraged it with sustained winds of 140 mph. 

“The potential need for volunteers came on our radar about Tuesday of the week before the typhoon hit,” said Shane Hester, Continuity of Operations and Emergency Management manager. “We got official word we’d be deploying on Friday afternoon.”

Michael Hulse, a supervisory electrical engineer in Asset Reliability, Performance and Maintenance, and Kelly Miller, a supervisory civil engineer in the Transmission Structural and Civil Engineering group, joined Hester in response to FEMA’s call for assistance, providing what Hulse described as “ground truthing” before and after the storm.

As Emergency Support Function #12 members, they helped the Department of Energy and FEMA understand the magnitude of the impact and what state the electrical system would be in after landfall. They served as the liaisons to state and local government, fuel suppliers and all other affected parties on the island.

Under ESF #12, the BPA volunteers served on the Catastrophic Incident Response Team comprised of individuals who have the technical skills to provide damage assessment support and restoration planning assistance. Hester and Miller were on the ground. Prior to the storm, they met with local utility companies to understand their preparedness for the storm. They also met with fuel suppliers, such as Mobil, to determine how much fuel was available on the island and to assess the equipment as well as evaluate if there were enough materials on hand to fix the grid. 

As a CIRT communicator, Hulse was stationed at the field office and coordinated field activities with DOE. This role was especially important during the storm to restore A.B. Won Pat International Airport, which was critical for bringing in humanitarian aid and equipment to aid the island’s recovery efforts.

The night of the storm, the three were in their hotel rooms with their satellite phones, checking in with DOE hourly to give updates on the storm and relaying that they were safe. Once the winds dropped below tropical storm levels, they left their shelter and got to work.

“When looking at anything above a Category 4, the first thing you notice is vegetation ripped from the plants,” said Hester. “It looks like things are burnt because there is no green left.”

Despite the intensity of the storm, Miller shared that Guam’s power system remained resilient because of system hardening upgrades performed after Super Typhoon Pongsona in 2002.

“I was expecting to see, from a power grid perspective, poles snapped in half on the ground – we didn’t see that,” said Miller. “The village areas where distribution is was different. There was debris; connections to homes damaged. But their main grid looked good.”

Hester said the island was expected to be 95% restored 30 days after impact, which is remarkable after a Category 4 storm. Saipan was 95% restored six months after the impact of Typhoon Yutu.

The group of three volunteers remained deployed for a total of 14 days. They were replaced by a second wave of BPA volunteers consisting of Bret Aguirre, a supervisory electronics engineer in Transmission Engineering and Technical Services, David Kirsch, an electrical engineer in the Operations Control group and Jared Perez, a supervisory civil engineer in Construction Management. A third wave of volunteers included Todd Anderson, a work planner scheduler in Construction and Maintenance.