Lessons learned from Fort Bliss Black Start Exercise: Brendan Gallagher

A widespread power outage at a military installation can rapidly degrade the quality of life for tens of thousands of people, while also generating serious impacts to readiness, communications, public safety, and the ability to project combat power.

To help address this, the Department of Defense has directed military installations to conduct a “Black Start Exercise.” It entails cutting off power for at least eight hours to better assess gaps and vulnerabilities, and thereby increase long-term resilience.

At Fort Bliss, we conducted our Black Start Exercise in March 2024. Since our lessons might be helpful for other installations — or cities, since military installations can resemble small cities — this piece seeks to consolidate a few observations from our experience.

The importance of extensive planning and coordination cannot be overstated. Our team began by studying the layout of our grid, the architecture of feeders to various facilities, and how we believed those connections could impact critical installation functions. We also refined our understanding of our backup power generation capabilities, refueling plans, and feeding plans.

We coordinated with local utility providers. We engaged with our commissary to understand its ability to maintain cold food stockages. We coordinated with Freedom Crossing — our shopping center on Fort Bliss — to understand how a power outage might impact its commercial and dining locations. This was in addition to coordination with numerous other entities and partners.

It soon became evident that a vital linchpin of an operation of this magnitude would involve communication. Fort Bliss is the second-largest installation in the Department of Defense, with an on-post population of over 60,000 people, and a total supported population of over 170,000. We realized that we might do all the right things, but if we could not communicate our actions then it could leave our community in the dark literally and figuratively. At the extreme end, a failure to communicate might even threaten people’s lives. If people didn’t know what to do with their lifesaving medical devices or refrigerated medications, or how to drive at intersections without functioning traffic lights, it might foster dangerous situations.

We communicated tips early and often, via every conceivable means: a power outage website; social media; town hall-type events; flyers; automated text messages; and more. They underscored relevant advice, including the need to maintain spare batteries and flashlights, the need to keep refrigerators and freezers closed, and what procedures to follow when childcare centers lose power.

We also communicated with our El Paso community. We reiterate that “El Paso is Fort Bliss, and Fort Bliss is El Paso.” At Fort Bliss we are incredibly fortunate to enjoy the single greatest, most positive relationship with the community that I’ve observed throughout my military career. We sought to communicate our upcoming exercise with local news outlets, as well as during our Fort Bliss Community Summit where we hosted officials from West Texas and southern New Mexico.

The exercise proved humbling in some respects. We realized that we still had more to learn about our electrical grid. Leading up to the exercise, we had conducted a localized outage of select feeders on a trial basis. We acknowledged that we would have no ability to section off our privatized housing from the exercise, given the overlapping, intertwined nature of our grid; hence, roughly two-thirds of our privatized housing would need to take part. But while we were reasonably confident about certain aspects, we also appreciated there would be aspects that might create surprises. Specifically, we learned that there were some connections among feeders and facilities that we had no idea about until the actual post-wide outage. Some backup generators failed, and other generators functioned better than expected.

Our Black Start Exercise entailed extensive preparation by many hardworking people including invaluable support from Installation Management Command and Army G-9, along with clear and timely guidance from our Fort Bliss Commanding General, Major General James Isenhower.

The planning and support paid off. The extended blackout affecting tens of thousands of people unfolded safely, with not a single injury or traffic accident.

The post-wide outage provided an opportunity to better see ourselves as an installation and to set conditions to enhance our resilience over the long term, while deepening Fort Bliss’ relationship with the wonderful city of El Paso. For all these reasons, we wanted to share our observations, particularly if they might assist other populated areas considering similar exercises.

Brendan Gallagher is a U.S. Army colonel who commands the U.S. Army Garrison at Fort Bliss. He earned a Ph.D. at Princeton, and is the author of the book The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace (Cornell University Press).

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army or Department of Defense.