Catastrophic Power Outage Poses a “Profound Threat” to the US, New Government Report Finds
The United States is not prepared for a catastrophic power outage, according to an alarming new report from the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC).
The report, titled Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage, explains the findings of the council, which is tasked with examining the nation’s “ability to respond to and recover from a catastrophic power outage of a magnitude beyond modern experience, exceeding prior events in severity, scale, duration, and consequence. Simply put, how can the nation best prepare for and recover from a catastrophic power outage, regardless of the cause?”
It begins with a grim statement in the Executive Summary:
After interviews with dozens of senior leaders and experts and an extensive review of studies and statutes, we found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage. This profound risk requires a new national focus.
The NIAC defines a catastrophic power outage as:
- Events beyond modern experience that exhaust or exceed mutual aid capabilities
- Likely to be no-notice or limited-notice events that could be complicated by a cyber-physical attack
- Long duration, lasting several weeks to months due to physical infrastructure damage
- Affects a broad geographic area, covering multiple states or regions and affecting tens of millions of people
- Causes severe cascading impacts that force critical sectors—drinking water and wastewater systems, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services—to operate in a degraded state
Actions that all levels of government need to take to prepare are discussed in the report, as summarized in this chart:
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