JEA Ready to Respond to Emergencies During Hurricane Season with Fully Stocked Warehouse

JACKSONVILLE, Florida. – JEA did not wait for the start of the hurricane season to have the necessary equipment to respond to an emergency.

Preparations began long ago to completely fill a warehouse with all essential materials.

News4JAX had the opportunity to visit the JEA warehouse on the Westside on Friday. The entire space is 100,000 square feet and contains approximately $7 million worth of storm inventory.

The warehouse contains more than 580 items, all helping to restore power as quickly as possible in the event of an emergency, hurricane or very severe storm.

Rodney Lovgren and Jessica Keeler, both of JEA, said filling this warehouse to 100 percent is paramount.

“When a named event occurs or we mobilize, we have four semi-trailers with which we deploy two staging areas and this allows us to be able to intervene immediately for restoration,” said Lovgren.

Keeler said the more they had on hand, the quicker the JEA could act in an emergency.

“The faster we can deploy our teams and offer restoration to our customers,” Keeler said.

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Materials in stock include:

• Underground cables

• Overhead and underground transformers, some you would see on top of a pole

• Large green boxes that can sometimes be seen in a courtyard or outside a business

• A mix of cables, supports and insulators

• Post line hardware

Keeler and Lovgren said it took about a year and a half for this warehouse to meet those standards because some supplies had been out of stock for that long.

“This program had been going on for several years before. But we flagged it in the last three or four years because of all the supply chain disruptions. It’s almost doubled in size from what it was before 2020,” Lovgren said.

Keeler said, however, that some of these materials have a limited lifespan.

“With transformers, we want to make sure everything is right from a petroleum and mechanical perspective. For cable, some cables are stored outdoors, and the wooden spools may be damaged due to weather conditions, which may damage the cable. We want to monitor the materials to make sure we are ready to go and that there are no unforeseen surprises when we actually need to use them,” Keeler said.

Whether restoring power to a hospital, first responders, businesses or homes, JEA said crews must be ready at all times. Keeler said having these supplies available “improves response time and helps restore power to the community.”