Utility Resilience in an Era of Escalating Risk

Utilities must move beyond traditional reliability metrics, adopting comprehensive emergency management frameworks that protect critical infrastructure, support responders and enhance long-term community stability amid escalating climate threats.

By Michael Velasquez, Scott Holmquist and Ashley Harrigan

Nov. 5, 2026

4 min read

Add Us On Google

Key Highlights

Apply the five emergency management phases to evaluate utility resilience before, during and after disasters.
Assess plans for staffing, NIMS/ICS coordination, exercises, communications and protection of medically vulnerable customers.
Recognize that utility employees are both disaster responders and community members affected by emergencies.
Use risk-assessment tools such as RAMCAP/J100 to guide mitigation investments and reduce recurring vulnerabilities.
Turn after-action reviews into stronger regulatory filings, recovery plans and long-term community resilience.

Lineworkers replace a shattered pole damaged by supercell winds.

Electric utilities must plan for and operate the grid amid escalating threats from extreme weather, wildfires and other disruptions. To solve these challenges head-on, utility executives and operators are joining forces with technology providers. state and regulatory commissioners, investors, consultants, nonprofit organizations and government leaders, including public safety agencies. Together, they are exchanging practical strategies, strengthening partnerships, and helping define the next generation of grid resilience.

For example, over the last year, decision-makers have come together at action-oriented forums to test assumptions, compare practical approaches and define next steps for regulators and utilities. With several utility commissioners in attendance and participating in panel discussions, they reinforced the role of state commissions in ensuring communities can rely on essential services — electricity, gas, water and telecommunications —when they matter most. These services protect public safety, support economic activity and sustain households, businesses, public agencies and critical infrastructure workers.

As disasters become more frequent, costly and interconnected, commissions must look beyond traditional reliability metrics and assess whether utilities can maintain service under severe conditions. Emergency management principles offer a practical framework for evaluating utility readiness, protecting essential staff and strengthening community resilience.

Ice coated power lines and tree branches as freezing rain continued to fall in Monroe, Louisiana, following Winter Storm Fern.

Responding to Winter Storm Fern

Winter Storm Fern was projected to affect up to 230 million Americans as it moved from the Southwest to the Mid-Atlantic and into New England. By January 27, 2026, the storm had already produced more than 800,000 power outages, more than three dozen deaths — including several reportedly linked to hypothermia — and emergency declarations in 24 states.

Severe ice accumulation raised the likelihood of multi-day restoration efforts, underscoring a central reality for regulators and utilities: resilience is not measured only by infrastructure performance, but by whether essential services can be sustained when communities and responders are under simultaneous strain.

Winter Storm Fern made the need for an emergency management framework unmistakable. Widespread outages, transportation disruptions and life-safety risks affected not only customers, but also the utility workers responsible for restoring service.

Many employees were expected to respond to system failures while facing damaged homes, blocked roads, school closures and vulnerable family members of their own. Utility personnel are both responders and disaster survivors, and utilities must plan accordingly if they expect to restore service safely, quickly and effectively.

A severe tornado causes the roof of a home to cave in.

A Practical Framework Organized by the Five Emergency Management Phases

1. Prevention. Utilities can move beyond reactive planning by applying proactive measures that prevent or limit system disruptions, including cybersecurity safeguards, physical security improvements, real-time monitoring and interagency information sharing.

Over time, these efforts help protect public safety, preserve economic stability and reduce the cascading community impacts that follow major service disruptions. This phase directly supports the Critical Infrastructure Committee’s role in helping commissions identify evolving threats and encourage utilities to adopt practices that reduce the likelihood of catastrophic failures before they occur.

2. Mitigation. Targeted risk-reduction investments can lessen disaster impacts, improve service continuity and reduce the long-term burden on households, businesses, public agencies and local economies. Examples include grid hardening, flood protection, substation fortification, vegetation management, wildfire mitigation and improved system design. The discussion will also address tools such as RAMCAP/J100, which help quantify risks and resilience benefits, giving commissions a more objective basis for determining whether utilities are addressing known vulnerabilities in ways that strengthen community resilience over time.

3. Preparedness. Preparedness is where regulatory oversight can have the greatest practical impact. Commissioners will gain a clearer understanding of what credible utility preparedness should include:

Emergency plans aligned with NIMS and ICS
Clear command structures and communication protocols
Pre‑identified staffing strategies that anticipate personal impacts on employees
Coordination with state emergency management, public safety agencies and other lifeline sectors
Messaging plans for customers, including medically vulnerable populations
Exercises, training and after‑action reviews that reveal whether plans are actionable

Winter Storm Fern showed that preparedness cannot stop at equipment, procedures, or mutual aid agreements. It must also account for utility staff who are expected to restore service while their own families and communities are affected. Strong preparedness supports long-term community stability by helping utilities maintain essential services, reduce recovery delays and protect the workers who sustain lifeline infrastructure.

4. Response. Integrated emergency management principles, especially ICS, can make utility response faster, safer, and more coordinated. These principles support unified command, clearer resource allocation, stronger cross-sector interoperability and better situational awareness. They also help limit the duration and severity of community disruption by improving how utilities coordinate with public safety, emergency management and other lifeline sectors during crises.

This phase reinforces a critical operational reality: utility personnel must restore service while often managing personal disaster impacts of their own.

5. Recovery. Recovery is more than restoring power; it is the phase that determines whether a disaster becomes a repeated vulnerability or a catalyst for stronger long-term community resilience. Effective recovery processes can improve future planning, reduce recurring risks and ensure that utilities capture lessons learned in a disciplined way. Recovery also requires coordinated documentation, reimbursement alignment and transparent communication with commissions and communities.

Regulators will see how after-action analyses can inform future rate cases, reliability plans and resilience filings so that each event leads to stronger systems, better customer protection and more durable community outcomes.

Phases of Response Activities

Wildfire engulfs palm trees and a hillside at night.

Reducing Risk, Improving Resilience and Advancing the Community Concept

Growing risks posed by climate change, hurricanes, floods, severe weather, public safety power shutoffs and wildfires require more than infrastructure investment alone; they require a disciplined emergency management capability at the center of utility resilience.

Emergency management departments give utilities the structure needed to coordinate decisions, resources, communications and partnerships across internal teams, public agencies, private-sector partners and community stakeholders before, during and after disasters. Their role is critical for all-hazards threats, including cyberattacks, civil disturbance, domestic terrorism, public health emergencies and severe weather events. These can simultaneously disrupt grid operations, endanger first responders and utility workers, affect customers and slow community recovery.

Elevating emergency management from a supporting function to a core resilience strategy would help ensure that utility investments translate into real-world protection for the whole community when essential services are under stress.

By applying the five phases of emergency management — prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery — commissions can evaluate utility readiness in a more coordinated, consistent and actionable way. This approach benefits all stakeholders by positioning emergency management as a central partner in leadership decisions, helping ensure that utility plans, investments, staffing models and partnerships are aligned with the scale, speed and complexity of today’s risks.

Key Takeaways from Recent Forums

A regulator-focused understanding of how the five emergency management phases create a complete, proactive resilience strategy that protects essential services and supports long-term community stability.
Tools to evaluate utility plans — including risk assessments, staffing models, emergency exercises, communication strategies and ICS/NIMS integration — with a focus on reducing service disruptions and improving outcomes for customers and communities.
Recognition that utility staff serve both as responders and as community members affected by disasters, making workforce preparedness and continuity planning essential to safe, reliable restoration.
A clearer approach to assessing prevention and mitigation investments, including standardized risk-assessment tools such as RAMCAP/J100, to help reduce recurring vulnerabilities and strengthen community resilience over time.
Guidance for reviewing preparedness filings and after-action reports to determine whether utilities are applying lessons learned from events such as the January 2026 winter storm to improve future planning, recovery and customer protection.
A stronger regulatory lens for communication, equity, and customer protection, especially for medically vulnerable populations, rural communities, critical facilities and others most affected by prolonged disruptions.
Alignment with the NARUC Critical Infrastructure Committee’s mission to help state commissions evaluate threats, share solutions and advance infrastructure security and resilience in ways that deliver lasting benefits for the communities utilities serve.

The 2020 Almeda wildfire burned this mobile home park in Oregon.

Understanding the Impact

As hazards intensify and interdependencies deepen, state commissions must be able to evaluate whether utilities are not just reactive but proactively prepared across all five emergency management phases. Understanding these phases helps regulators assess whether utilities:

Prevent what they can
Mitigate what they cannot prevent
Prepare for what they cannot mitigate
Respond effectively under real‑world staffing constraints
Recover in ways that strengthen future resilience

By adopting an emergency-management-centered approach, commissions can advance the Whole Community concept by ensuring utilities plan, train and prepare for everyone affected by disasters — customers, critical staff, public agencies, businesses, vulnerable populations and communities that depend on lifeline services.

Standardized, NIMS-compliant preparedness strengthens service continuity, supports utility workers and helps utilities protect the full community they serve during and after major disasters.