Most Friday storm nights I’m juggling outages across 3 counties. At 11:00 p.m. last week, a squall line dropped trees and we lost 12 feeders — about 18,400 customers in the dark from Mile 6 to the river bend. The first hour decides everything: who patrols, who switches, who waits for tree crews. I set a single incident channel and name one lead per circuit so we’re not tripping over each other on the radio or sending two trucks to the same lockout. My small habit is a live board in Teams tied to the OMS: zones, crew, last status time, and a red/yellow/green ETR flag. We do 15-minute huddles at:00 and:30, and I pre-tag switching steps so a foreman can execute in 2–3 moves. Watch-out: don’t publish pretty ETRs.
I keep a whiteboard with each feeder’s single hold point and a plain goal like “restore to R5 from west,” then do a 30‑minute roll‑up where each lead reports: patrolling, switching, or waiting, plus head/tail landmarks. It trims radio clutter and makes it obvious who needs tree first versus who can be switched around.
I run a 20‑minute roll‑call with a tight radio script: “Feeder, status (P/S/T), last hold point, next switch, headcount.” Example: “F12, S, open at R5‑17, next close K‑81 at mile 9, two.” It slashes crosstalk and lets me sort the T’s to drop tree crews where one cut will pick 600-1,000 fast.