On the morning of Jan. 25, the ice storm we all knew was coming hit the South – and middle Tennessee was the most impacted. I am a Nashville native, and nothing could have prepared me for what my community has had to endure at the hands of our electric utility providers' failure to respond to this disaster.
My neighborhood lost power at 5:55 a.m. I was woken up by the transformer right outside of my house exploding, followed by a chorus of other explosions. I later found out these were trees imploding from the amount of ice built up on and inside of them. Nearly every power line in my area was taken down by treefall in a matter of hours, creating a minefield of explosion and shock risk from live power lines littering the ground. My neighbors house was hit by three falling trees in one afternoon, and my friend had a dog pass away on their street from touching one of the live lines on a walk.
That first day, our community came together. Neighbors were out in groups cutting through and moving fallen trees, but couldn't keep up with the constant tree fall. Folks in the neighborhood were checking on each other to make sure everyone had ways to keep warm- but not a single Nashville Electric Service (NES)- the only electric utility in the area- or other official support made it our way. We were in a cell service dark zone for multiple providers with no way to communicate outside of the circle of homes you could walk to, and no way out of the area given the extensive treefall and the ice coating the roadways and vehicles.
Lucky enough to have a fireplace to keep warm, my dog, my cat, and I huddled under one blanket as close to the fire as possible. Even with blankets covering all the windows and doors in the small room I set up as our home base, I could barely keep the room above freezing. I worried about my mother and grandmother. Not being able to contact anyone, I let my mind run wild with scenarios on their safety.
Day two and three passed much in the same way, no NES crews or government support helping folks from freezing or starving. On day four, a friend with a four wheel drive truck was able to reach me and we went to a place with power, but even by day six, more than 100,000 people were without power from the Nashville Electric Service. My neighborhood has suffered such extensive damage, and is outside of the highly populated urban area- so it will be weeks if not longer before our power is restored. Why did NES not have anyone out to survey the area at minimum, or go around to share the timeline for power restoration directly with folks impacted for over a week? Why was the only utility in the region so grossly unprepared for a storm they knew was coming?
Tennessee still has over-the-ground power lines. Time and time again, customers are faced with these life or death scenarios without access to electricity instead of moving these lines underground. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and NES have both chosen to put profit over reliability and affordability for their customer base, and these are the moments that those choices are felt. NES and TVA have started conversations on a fracked gas pipeline buildout in middle Tennessee to supply billionaire data center pet projects for the likes of Elon Musk, while there is a chronic lack of investment in transmission system upgrades to prevent events like these from happening. NES shared at a board meeting that gas lines were part of the slow recovery because they had to consider safety when digging. Thousands of Nashvillians are freezing over a week after this storm, and this week will see temperatures even lower than during the ice storm itself. The gross lack of preparedness for disaster response and power restoration is directly due to the poor choices being made by a monopoly utility perpetually putting shareholders over customers.
We don’t need more fossil fuel build out or data centers in Tennessee, we need transmission and grid reliability. We need underground power lines and power generation that has long term future stability from renewable resources. We need energy investments that benefit utility customers, not billionaires. We all deserve better, and call for NES to take swift action to restore power to those who are still without. Longer term, NES must prioritize investment in renewable energy and grid reliability solutions that, paired with long term contracts with a unionized workforce, can ensure that we are prepared for the future and able to mitigate risk in the face of climate disasters like this.