Barnstable County Regional Emergency Planning Committee

Blizzard Hernando: Regional Response by the Numbers!

At the height of Blizzard Hernando, 153,000 customers were without power across Cape Cod.

Six regional shelters opened across the region, along with at least 14 local warming centers and charging locations. Hundreds of residents sheltered as outages stretched into multiple days.

17,000 meals were distributed through Family Table Collaborative with support from local and national food partners. The Cape Cod RTA provided hundreds of rides transporting residents and pets to shelters and also supported Family Table Collaborative by assisting with meal transportation and deliveries.

Eversource deployed approximately 2,000 line crews statewide, with many assigned to Cape Cod, including mutual aid crews from across the Northeast and Canada. Public works teams cleared secondary roads so line crews could reach blocked neighborhoods.

Approximately 200 local, county, state, nonprofit, and utility partners joined regional coordination calls twice per day to stay in lockstep.

Eighteen AmeriCorps Cape Cod members supported shelters and the Multi-Agency Coordination Center (MACC), the regional hub where municipal emergency management teams worked alongside the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Eversource, National Grid, the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), public safety leaders, and nonprofit partners to coordinate response operations.

American Red Cross staff and volunteers, Medical Reserve Corps volunteers, Cape Cod Disaster Animal Response Team (CCDART) members, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members from multiple Cape Cod towns, and public health nurses staffed shelters. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) provided critical animal care support and supplies to assist residents sheltering with pets.

County staff stepped outside of their typical roles to support operations at the MACC.

There are also contributions that cannot be measured: neighbors who shoveled driveways, residents who checked on someone vulnerable. These small acts, though often unspoken, create community resilience and strengthen the overall response.

Pictured here in the Multi-Agency Coordination Center (MACC), representatives from Barnstable County, Eversource, AmeriCorps Cape Cod, the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) worked side by side throughout the storm response.