For more than 130 years, Arizona Public Service has been committed to delivering reliable power to our customers. When unforeseen circumstances occur, our Flagstaff-based team is there to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.
In advance of monsoon season and heavy snow winters, our team performs proactive improvements to the grid to help bolster reliability when storms do arrive. What customers don’t often see are the people working behind the scenes at every job, from those coordinating project details to those climbing the utility pole to restore power to an area.
One of those people, Kara Van Hemert, comes from a family whose combined service at APS spans more than 155 years. Today, Van Hemert serves as a customer project representative in Flagstaff and oversees operations and maintenance projects that ensure our customers are connected to power at the flip of a switch.
In her role within operations and maintenance, Van Hemert helps ensure the reliability of our electrical system when troublemen, also known as linemen, report the need for repairs. These upgrades to the system require design upgrades, special device replacements and fire mitigation services within as little time as 30 days.
As our troublemen work to restore power as quickly and safely as possible, which sometimes may require temporary fixes, Van Hemert provides completed repair designs and materials for permanent repairs. Our commitment to reliable power keeps us working year-round as our project representatives work to fix or upgrade equipment, which helps to prevent future outages.
When Mother Nature brings storms and strong winds, our customer care team is often the first to hear about outages. Prisicilla Brockman, an APS Customer Service Advanced Advisor in Flagstaff, has been helping APS customers for nearly 20 years. When a customer calls during a service interruption, Brockman and her team work to provide the most up-to-date information, including the estimated time of restoration. Brockman often works with dispatch crews to help linemen pinpoint the exact location and cause of an interruption in order to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.
At the end of the day, while our commitment to our customers has remained the same for more than a century, it’s the people who come to work every day who make it possible for 1.2 million customers throughout Arizona to connect to power day in and day out. FBN
By Janet Dean
Janet Dean is the community affairs manager for APS.