Upcoming Windstorm Forums with Duke Energy

I received some incredibly thoughtful and helpful feedback to my recent windstorm survey, and will post it soon.

In the meantime, Duke Energy is seeking direct input from citizens on their response.

Here's the memo I received today:

"On September 14, 2008, a historic wind storm from the remnants of Hurricane Ike struck the entire Greater Cincinnati area, carrying hurricane force winds that included three bursts in excess of 70 miles per hour. The unprecedented winds brought widespread damage especially to trees and power lines.

More than 780,000 customers, or 90 percent, were out of service after the storm with many being out more than once. Nearly 11,000 cases of damage were reported and addressed. This was the largest outage event in the history of the company’s Ohio/Kentucky service area.

Currently, all of our departments involved in storm restoration are going through a lessons learned process to improve our future storm response. In addition, we are reaching out to our customers to share our restoration and prioritization process and learn how we could improve our communications during restoration. We want to provide customers the opportunity to share with us how we can improve our communication process with them.

We have scheduled two community information sessions to discuss our windstorm restoration process and gain valuable feedback on improving our customer communications. We hope you will share the location, date and times of these meetings with your residents.

Thursday, October 2, 2008, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. – Oasis Conference Center, 902 Loveland-Miamiville Road, Loveland, OH 45140

Monday, October 6, 2008, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. – Forest Park Senior Center, 11555 Winton Road, Forest Park, OH 45240"

If you want a chance to ask questions or make suggestions directly to Duke, this is a great opportunity.