Northeast Learns Lessons From '08 Ice Storm

One of the huge pine trees that surrounded Sieglinde Poegel's home of 42 years crashed through the roof and landed in her living room during the ice storm that crippled much of the Northeast last December.

"It sounded like I was in a war again. I lived through World War II in Germany when the bombs fell, and I was scared something awful," she recalled.

Poegel and her husband, Werner, were unable to return permanently for several months to their home in Jaffrey, about 15 miles from the Massachusetts state line.

This year, they are taking no chances.

"The house is repaired and we took another step — cut every tree on our property out. Every one of the trees," said Poegel, 72. "I've still got rhododendron bushes, so we don't really miss them."

As the cold season returns to the Northeast, residents, utilities and emergency managers say they're better prepared, thanks to the lessons from that ferocious ice storm Dec. 11-12 that left hundreds of thousands without power — some for two weeks.

At Unitil, the utility most assailed for delays in restoring power, every employee now has a storm assignment. In New Hampshire, where more than half of the state's homes and businesses went dark, lawmakers passed a bill allowing utilities, which do year-round tree trimming in the heavily forested state, to cut on private property if landowners don't respond to a written notice within 45 days.

Emergency management agencies in several states have emphasized training and planning for a worst-case scenario and being more aggressive about using radio, Web sites and social media outlets such as Twitter for reports of outages and updates.

State and local governments harshly criticized the utilities for their response to the storm. The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities this week ordered New Hampshire-based Unitil, which provides electricity to four communities in that state, to hire an independent auditor to review its management system. Some residents sued the utility for losses incurred in the storm. New Hampshire is soon releasing its own report on the utilities' performance.