The following is a transcript of the June 30, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s News director.
Our guest on this episode is Amy Zubaly, Executive Director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association. Amy is here to discuss how public power utilities and FMEA have prepared for this year's hurricane season.
Amy, thanks for joining us.
Amy Zubaly
Thanks so much for having me, Paul. It's a pleasure to be here.
Paul Ciampoli
Amy, just to get our conversation started, one of the things that I wanted to talk about and we've actually covered in our newsletter with respect to prior years is the fact that this year FMEA in May held a hurricane and storm preparedness forum.
So could you provide an overview of this forum and how it helps public power utilities prepare for the hurricane season?
Amy Zubaly
First, let me start by saying that our member utilities prepare for hurricane season, which starts June 1, by the way, year round…we review and exercise our plans and update them and so that preparedness activity takes place year round. Some of our member utilities do tabletop exercises. Some do actual simulations, others do constant reviews of their emergency assistance plans.
But one of the things FMEA does as our association that represents our member utilities is that we hold a hurricane and storm preparedness forum every year -- typically in May right before the start of that hurricane season.
The forum is filled with presentations and discussions on hurricane preparedness, mutual aid, logistics coordination, field response, customer service, FEMA recovery documentation.
Last year, Florida had a very, very active year in mutual aid. I say mutual aid because it wasn't just hurricanes last year. Our year of mutual aid pretty much started out in May when Tallahassee experienced three tornadoes simultaneously right before hurricane season, and it caused massive amounts of devastation.
The damage from the tornadoes was more than they had had in the many previous years of hurricanes combined.
And then once hurricane season started, there were three hurricanes that impacted Florida. We had Hurricane Debbie, which was a category one storm in August and then we had Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which were in October and followed each other with only 13 weeks.
And then we also responded to Louisiana for Hurricane Francine. In addition to our own recovery in Helene, we had crews that helped out other utilities in Florida and other public power utilities in the Carolinas. So it was a very, very active year.
So this year's forum really focused a lot on best practices and lessons learned from the previous year. We continuously improve on how we respond to hurricanes. Every storm is different, and every storm brings about a new situation and new challenges.
And so this is just a really great opportunity for our members to all come together in one setting to share best practices, to share lessons learned, to network and to continuously improve on our hurricane response.
Paul Ciampoli
So you mentioned mutual aid and that's a good segue to my next question that I prepared for you, which is I wanted to give you the opportunity to describe the role of mutual aid as it relates to hurricane storm restoration efforts. And also if you could tell our listeners about the role you play in terms of coordinating mutual aid efforts.
Amy Zubaly
I'll start with the second question there first. FMEA serves as the statewide mutual aid coordinator for all of our member utilities. So our 33 member utilities in the state of Florida, anytime any of them have a need in which they need some additional support to help restore power, whether it be from a neighboring utility or in a hurricane, there's widespread outages and we are often pulling in mutual aid crews and lineworkers from across the country.
We've used crews as far away as Minnesota and New England, and then likewise, if there is another state or area that needs some extra support, FMEA coordinates our member utilities to go out and respond to them as well.
So we are that response and the coordinator for anybody that needs some extra help and where we can assist on that. But mutual aid -- it's essential. It's vital. It is the most important part of responding and recovering from a hurricane. It's all about neighbors helping neighbors and whether those neighbors, as I mentioned, are from the next town over, somewhere else in the state or several states away, it's just an essential part of our recovery.
Following hurricanes, there's devastation -- homes and property are damaged in some cases are destroyed. The power is out. Here in Florida, it's hot – it gets really, really hot. There's a lot of despair going on and seeing those trucks rolling in from all over the country just kind of brings a little bit of hope into people's lives. They know that they're not in this alone. That there's other people there that are working hard and working around the clock to help get those lights back on.
I think that Jeff Stewart, who is the general manager at Lafayette Utilities in Lafayette, Louisiana, said it best. He did a video for your national conference this year on mutual aid response and he said that mutual aid is the hug you didn't know you need and I love that and I think it's so true.
It's just a vital part and it's essential in everything that we do and we couldn't recover the way that we recover if we didn't have the great mutual aid network that we have.
Paul Ciampoli
How does FMEA coordinate with APPA when it comes to power restoration efforts?
Amy Zubaly
I mentioned this great mutual aid network that we have and that's all coordinated within APPA. APPA has this amazing group of individuals that all serve on the mutual aid committee, the MAC Committee, as we call it, and the MAC is made up of all of the state and regional mutual aid coordinators from across the country.
We meet in person twice a year. One of those meetings is typically our own exercise where we find ways to improve upon our mutual aid coordination. I've gotten to know these people. They're my friends. It's really easy to call on them in a time of need, but when we have hurricanes that are coming into Florida and we're being threatened by them I ask APPA to start holding a mutual aid call.
And all of these amazing individuals that are part of the Mutual Aid Committee get together on a call, and I start talking about the potential needs that we're going to have in Florida and everybody reaches out to all of their member utilities and their state or their region to find out how many and who all can respond and so we work very closely.
We continue to have these daily calls to make sure that there are no needs that are still left unmet. In addition, one of FMEA's other roles and responsibilities during hurricanes and other emergency situations is that we serve as that liaison between our member utilities and our state and federal partners. So at the state level, that might be the governor's office. That might be the Division of Emergency Management. It might be our state emergency operations center.
At the federal level, APPA is tied to those federal agencies and entities as well, like the Department of Energy, FEMA, Homeland Security, and they work closely with the Electric Sector Coordinating Council.
And so I assist APPA. I make sure that I am reporting out to them on what is going on on the ground here. If we have any problems or needs or concerns or issues that the federal level can assist with, and APPA can work closely with us to provide us that assistance.
Paul Ciampoli
Amy, my final question to you and I believe we talked about this around this time last year as we were entering hurricane season. The question ties into supply chain challenges.
Those are still present in terms of what the electric utility industry is facing these days. I was just wondering if this is a concern as it relates to hurricane and storm recovery efforts in 2025?
Amy Zubaly
I think that the supply chain challenges that we were experiencing as the nation recovered from COVID, which were very critical challenges where transformers were taking what used to take six months to three years -- I think that it's improving.
And so I think that those immediate dire concerns maybe have leveled out some. That said, I think that there's always a potential of having supply needs.
But last year was a great example on where I think that as an industry, not just in public power -- and public power is great at helping each other out -- but I think the industry as a whole is great.
I mentioned the tornadoes that Tallahassee had. They had 500 broken poles just in one day from those tornadoes, and then we turned around and we had three hurricanes, one of which Hurricane Helene impacted not only Florida but had detrimental critical impacts as it moved on into Georgia and the Carolinas and Tennessee and we made it through all of that hurricane season and the tornadoes OK.
There were little things that would pop up along the way -- maybe utility A needed a certain type of pole, or maybe they needed a certain type of transformer.
But between the APPA mutual aid network and the liaisons that we all have working with our co-ops and our IOUs, we all help and respond and so I really think that a lot of those supply needs are leveling off.
I don't want to say that no, it's not a challenge and that it's not a concern because that's always a concern and again any major event can cause some critical supply chain needs, but I think that ‘24 was a really great year of showing OK, we can do this and we're able to work through things, so I think it's stabilizing a little bit.
Paul Ciampoli
Well, that's good information because I hadn't actually brought up supply chain issues with other podcast guests in awhile and so that's interesting.
So Amy, thanks so much again for taking the time. I would love to make this a yearly episode. So this time next year, I would love to have you back and then obviously between now and then, I'm sure there's other things a lot of other things going on at FMEA that we could talk about in another episode.
Amy Zubaly
Absolutely, Paul. Happy to help.
Paul Ciampoli
Great. Thanks again, Amy.
Amy Zubaly
No problem. Thanks.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
