Wonderful Action Taken

I may as well be clear about it. I believe that a lot of people in my area were suffering a major problem in their homes recently, as we were in our house, but that we all knew very little about it. By that I mean, what caused the problem in the first place, how serious was it, whom would you call to fix it, when would they come and how much was it going to cost!

What happened that I experienced was that, over about a week and a half recently, electrical power in my house turned off and then almost immediately turned back on again. This happened on different days during that time period, just once per day however, at different times from very early in the morning to late in the afternoon. There seemed to be very little timing consistency other than the first two day failures when the power went off and on between 6:30 and 7 AM.

I decided that I was going to get involved in this matter as a resident impacted by it right away to help get it fixed up. One of the reasons for doing this was my fear that the problem that we had might be a very serious one and that we could lose our power for a very long period of time when the coming temperatures for the next several days were to be very high in the mid-90°F range. That temperature was expected towards this weekend.

If you remember, dear reader, the area where I lived in Tecumseh, and perhaps in other areas, some time ago had a massive electrical issue that required major work to correct the problem. I remember the experience I had in it when the electrical firm suggested early on not to worry about it because it was probably the animals that were fooling around with the wires that caused the breakdown for a short period time. Of course, that was not true and eventually the decision was made to replace parts and fix up the system to prevent the outages.

My thought was that the problem that we were having now was very simple. It was the same as before! All that I had to do was call the power company because they had the ability to fix it right away because they had the experience in doing so.

I am not going to get into a major conversation about it but naturally when I first called up I did not speak to an employee but to an outside operator. She took my message about the problem and suggested what was first offered last time. She suggested the same cause of the problem as before ie. small little animals.

I told her in a very nice way that she was completely wrong and that I needed to speak to someone in the company as quickly as possible. Just to let you know, the company that I had to approach first was Essex Powerlines Corporation. It was one that I knew very little about and in fact was not aware they were involved at all in the previous difficult situation.

I spoke early on with Joe Barile, General Manager, Essex Powerlines Corporation. He was a very senior member of that organization.  Our conversations went very well. There was no difficulty for me in handling the situation with him. He was well aware that it was my view that his Company had the legal obligation to handle the situation as quickly as possible.

Here's where some surprising information came in. He told me early on that his firm really had no big role in this matter. Oh sure, they sent out the bill to receive payment and if there were some issues, his company was supposed to be called to handle them. However the reality was that Hydro Inc. was the company that I should be calling because of their role in supplying the power to my family!

I told him that I believed that. I told him in fact that I had called Hydro One before speaking with him and they tried to tell me that they had no reason for speaking with me but rather that I should call his company to handle the matter. I quickly told the person I spoke with on the telephone to transfer me right away to someone upwards in their organization. When she did, I spoke with one of their managers and told her quite directly they knew that they had the obligation to fix things up and I expected them to do so by working with Essex Powerlines immediately. Fortunately, that lady told me that she would look into the matter and handle it right away.

Another party, the third one, got involved after I contacted them as well: the Town of Tecumseh. The people who got involved and made me very pleased about how active they were in trying to get this matter resolved quickly as well were: Mayor Gary McNamara, Deputy Mayor Joe Bachetti and my Councillor in Ward 2, Bill Altenhof. I knew that there was considerable discussion between them and the power firms to get this matter resolved as quickly as possible. In fact, on last Tuesday night, I was told that a Motion might be introduced at a City Council meeting demanding that the Electrical utilities fix up the problem as quickly as possible. As you will see that was not required to be done after all!

Obviously, I was not involved in all the actions among the three parties. I knew they were talking to each other but did not know what they were saying nor who was to do what nor when something positive was supposed to happen.

I arranged for a meeting with Joe Barile on the following Tuesday. It was going to be the time when we were to have a frank conversation about the issue and who was going to do what and when. He knew that I was going to be very direct with him and let him know that I thought that his firm was directly responsible for correcting the mess. After all, we as Tecumseh residents dealt with his firm.

Tuesday came. Our conversation started off very well as I told him what my thoughts were on the subject and what I thought his Company's responsibility for solving the problems for the customers was all about. Surprisingly, he really did not give me an answer to what I said. Rather he told me something completely and totally unexpected. The problem had been solved!

Through some terrific work done by the employees at Hydro One, they discovered not only what the problem was but fixed it. In other words, by the time that he arrived at my house to speak with me, the problem had been resolved!

Of course both of us discussed what would happen if the repair did not work and both agreed that care should be taken in making sure that nothing went wrong. So far, and fingers crossed, everything has turned out perfectly.

I think I could go into more detail but I do not think it is necessary. All what you, dear reader, should understand from what I have been writing is that the parties involved all worked extremely hard in trying to find a solution to the situation as quickly as possible for the aid of the Tecumseh residents. They did so amazingly well and very quickly!

I believe that we as residents of Tecumseh were treated properly and we should appreciate what these parties did for us.

To conclude, here is a note that Joe Barile wrote. Please take a look at it. I agree with what was said:

“Essex Powerlines is aware of numerous momentary faults (auto reclosers) which have affected and inconvenienced customers over the past week in the Town of Tecumseh. Essex Powerlines, with the assistance of Hydro One, believes that the likely root cause of the momentary outages has been determined and mitigation efforts were immediately undertaken in order to resolved the same. Essex Powerlines thanks Hydro One for taking steps to address this issue within their service territory in a prompt and efficient manner and we are also appreciative our customers patience and understanding while attempts were being made to resolve this issue.”