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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, 12,937 is the number of homes and businesses in Nashville that are still without power in the wake of Winter Storm Fern.

Eleven days after the storm hit, still, 12,937 customers of Nashville Electric Service are still in the dark. At its peak, hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans were without power. The consequences have been unimaginable. Many residents have had to leave their homes; others have struggled to power their life-sustaining medical equipment. Across Nashville, there have, tragically, been five fatalities linked to the storm, including some that occurred days after the storm hit the State.

One 92-year-old man, James Mitchell, passed away in his home after the generator powering his space heater stopped running. When a family member found him, it was 47 degrees in the house.

Two days later, 79-year-old Betty Doss, she passed away in her home after losing power for her HVAC system--her thermostat, 44 degrees in her home. I join all Tennesseans in mourning the tragic loss of every person across our State.

By failing to properly prepare for Winter Storm Fern, the Nashville Electric System, the 11th largest electric utility in the Nation put Tennesseans in harm's way.

In fact, in recent years, the company slashed funding for one of the most important ways to prevent power loss. Across Nashville, hundreds of tree branches have broken off into power lines due to the ice buildup. It is the main reason for power loss, and it is the responsibility of NES to trim trees around power lines to ensure this does not happen.

But between 2023 and 2025, the utility's leadership cut funding for tree-trimming services by $7 million dollars. The reason, as the NES CEO told local media in August:

We care about the tree canopy. We have to live here too.

Instead of funding tree trimming, the utility has focused on DEI. Between 2023 and early 2024, NES held 102 DEI training sessions for employees. It should be no surprise that when disaster struck, the utility was unprepared. In many cases, it offered completely contradictory information to customers.

People would get notices that their power was back on, but electricity was not restored. People would try to call NES and report an outage, but the phone system, it was not working.

They would pull up the website, but their online reporting was down. Yes, this is a failure. It is a failure for all 470,000 customers of NES. Half of them lost power. That is a 50 percent fail rate. When half of your customers lose power, then your system is not resilient. You do not have redundancies, and you are not able to provide the service that you are there to perform.

On Friday, I sent a letter to NES demanding a clear explanation for why it failed to prepare for the storm and prevent massive power loss for thousands of Tennesseans. In response, the company refused to take any responsibility and said that power should be fully restored by--get this--next week.

That would be a full 2 weeks of no power for many Nashville homes and businesses--businesses that have lost a lot of money.

So let me be clear, whomever is responsible for the disaster should be fired and should be replaced with competent leadership. This can never happen again.

In the meantime, I am incredibly grateful for the linemen who were on the ground making repairs and working in frigid temperatures to restore power. We thank them. They are the unsung heroes of the emergency response, along with our National Guardsmen, first responders, local and State law enforcement who are working around the clock to keep people safe and get them out of the cold.

As we work to recover from the storm, I am grateful that Elon Musk has donated generators to hundreds of Tennesseans who are still without power. We have also seen everyday citizens coming together with that good Tennessee volunteer spirit. Yes, we are the volunteer State.

They are showing up, cleaning out debris, chopping down branches, and helping their neighbors in need. We thank them, and we thank friends who have come from other States to help with the cleanup.

In the face of any challenge, Tennesseans always come together. This challenge is no different.

I thank all who have been here to support us.

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