After the Earthquake – Emergency Response

Rob Nanney’s day started early on Sunday August 24. Rob is the Operations Manager at CD & Power.  He has been with the company for 18 years and handles the 24 hour emergency telephone line.

After his wife woke him up for the earthquake at 3:30 am, he knew it would be a long day.   He was right.

The first CD & Power emergency call came in at 5:20 am from a grocery store in Napa.  The power was out and they needed a generator.  Rob called Alix, one of the apprentices.  They arranged to meet at the Martinez shop. They selected a generator and hooked the trailer to his truck. When Alix was getting close to Napa he called to give them his ETA.  “Never mind,” they told Alix, “the power is back on.”

The next call Rob received came in around 7 am.  Napa City Hall was flooded and the power was out. They needed a generator – fast.  Rob called Alix, who brought the generator to City Hall.. When he arrived the utility power had just come back online. Alix waited about 45 minutes and the customer decided he didn’t need to keep the generator on site, so Alix returned the generator to the shop.

Rob received another call from a construction company in Napa.  Rob told him that yes, we had plenty of generators available for rent. Rob called the customer a few minutes later and the customer said that the utility power was back up and he didn’t need a generator after all.

Another call came in from Alpha Technologies, a contractor for Comcast. They use generators to power facilities all over the Bay Area.  This time they needed fuel for the generators in Napa and Sonoma.  Alix came back to the Martinez shop and picked up the CD & Power fuel truck. Then he was on his way back to Napa.

About 11 am Rob got a call from Alameda Fire Department. They needed emergency generator repair, but it had nothing to do with the earthquake.  Rob dispatched generator technician Bob Serb for that one.  It turned out to be dead batteries.

A few minutes later the phone rang again.  This time it was the Napa Outlet Mall.  As Rob was calculating the size generator the client needed, guess what?  The power came back on. “Never mind,” they told Rob.

It was pretty quiet during the afternoon, but about 7 pm a call came in from that same grocery store that Rob heard from in the morning.  The power was out again.  This time, Rob called CD & Power technician Ken Brashaw, who works at the company’s Sacramento location.  Ken went to the Sacramento shop, picked up a generator and drove to Napa. About 10:30 pm, Ken called Rob and said that the power was back on, but the client decided to keep the generator onsite just in case they lost power again.

Rob’s personal attention to the emergency line is one of the big differences that sets CD & Power apart from other generator companies.  When customers call, they speak directly to a generator expert – not an answering service.