Publié sur LinkedIn le 29 avril 2025
The whole would call for international initiatives (public and private) to learn from the event.
And specifically, beyond what we already know:
– the key surprises,
– the hidden vulnerabilities and explosive chain effects,
– the best reactions (from those in charge, and from those impacted, including the citizens),
– the decisions that the best organizations are considering,
– the information and the difficulties encountered,
– the kind of national and European exercises to be organized now,
– and obviously the actions to be taken to prevent total black-outs.
After the Ice storm in Quebec and Ontario (January 1998), after the Toronto SARS epidemic (2003), after Katrina (2005), Électricité de France and Paris Airports decided to send a team to learn everything that could be learnt.
And it really proved useful: less than a year after the ice storm, France was deeply impacted by two giant storms; the lessons learnt in Montreal were instantly applied.
I remember the Whitney bank experience, during Katrina. They had a well designed backup system, but the blackout was so large that it was rapidly insufficient. It was decided to relocate the backup servers very far from the South.