In NES’ defense, slightly over 1/2 of NES customers were without power as this event unfolded. And they weren’t all in one are or path as would happen with a tornado - they were scattered all over the service territory of NES.
That’s not to say the the DEI horse hockey helped any, and most likely, it hurt. Probably a lot. The linemen can blow off that kind of stupid training as irrelevant, but middle and upper management types believe in it. They spent years at college having DEI force-fed to them as though it were beneficial.
They are reaping the rewards. Insufficient people in positions that can actually do something, slow to react. The operations people are or were overwhelmed, as you would be after an event like this tears up literally half of your distribution system, but having the people around and the know-how to deal with it is paramount for handling such a disaster.
I’ve followed this since electric power is my wheelhouse. They’re basically having to rebuild large swaths of their distribution system because it’s all been torn down by countless tree branches. Roads have to be made passable before line trucks can even get in to fix things. And if the customers are unlucky enough to have their distribution service in the back yard, that slows things down even more. Setting a pole and re-attaching wire along the road is a lot easier with a bucket truck than it is in a back yard where much of the work is manual and involves climbing poles and attaching things.
Perhaps, rather than government running NES at another level, it can be privatized. Southern Company, Louisville Gas & Electric, AEP, Duke Energy - there are numerous entities that would be able to get this mess fixed up.
Living in hurricane prone Florida I can vouch for Duke Energy they are excellent when emergencies knock out power. Depending where you live they may not prioritize your area but they do let you know estimated repair times. We were out of power for over two weeks when Hurricane Matthew hit. This convinced us to buy a Generac whole house generator so we can wait out power outages.