Report to the Community

Alabama Power has long prided itself on its reliability and quick response after times of trouble in Alabama. The company believes that it has a responsibility to the people of Alabama to ensure that power is delivered reliably and is on quickly after an outage. Yet, many people do not know it often goes beyond our borders. R E L I A B I L I T Y L I N E M E N – The Definition of Reliability Shortly after Hurricane Sandy hit the Atlantic coast last fall, hundreds of Alabama Power workers pitched in to help. The second costliest hurricane in American history, Sandy caused $20 billion in damage, took nearly 150 lives and left more than 8 million people in the dark as it roared northward from North Carolina to New England. As the hurricane approached, Alabama Power stationed crews in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, more than 500 workers, including 150 linemen, spent up to 18 days working 16-hour shifts restoring power in West Virginia, New Jersey and New York. New Jersey was especially hard hit, with towns such as Beesley's Point and Fair Haven going without electricity for more than a week before the big white trucks bearing the bright red Alabama Power logo rolled into town. Cameron Ray of Alabaster was one of those who came to the rescue. A lineman with the south region of the Birmingham Division, Ray spent several weeks in New Jersey, fixing poles, wires and transformers in towns along the coast. "Everybody up there was very nice to us," he says. "In Fair Haven they made us a big potluck dinner, and the kids drew pictures of us. We'd come out of the woods after working all day and there would be these drawings underneath our trucks' windshield wipers — pictures of stick men wearing Alabama Power hard hats and fixing everything." The Power of Social Media In addition to trucks and transformers, Alabama Power also used Internet tools such as Facebook and Twitter during the Sandy recovery. From the end of October when the storm approached New Jersey to the cleanup in December, the company's Facebook page saw an increase of daily "likes" from 6,000 to more than 14,000 — with many of those coming from New Jersey residents. Some of its Facebook friends received even more attention. More than 63,000 people responded to Karen Kosich's post thanking the company's crews. "'We'll have you up and running in no time,' they said, and they did!" Kosich wrote. "Much love to Alabama Power for coming to New Jersey." The Southerners got the chance to respond to their northern neighbors after a New Jersey radio station played "Sweet Home Alabama" for the linemen one day. "Some of our guys had tears in their eyes," read the Alabama Power post. "Y'all have been so nice and hospitable." 3

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