By all accounts, the disaster recovery plan worked well but some changes had to be made along the way. "We never follow the plan the letter," explains Johnson. "In the IT space, the plan is very solid in terms of what we have to do. But we’re always working – our core IT staff in conjunction with representatives from the business areas -- to see if we need to change priorities."

Entergy’s natural gas infrastructure below ground typically isn’t impacted by hurricanes the way the electrical infrastructure is. But because of the extensive flooding that Katrina wrought, gas leaks followed. "That changed the game a bit," says Johnson. "The applications associated with natural gas facilities mapping and asset tracking systems had to be moved up the list in terms of priority. It became clear that that would be much bigger part of the restoration effort." Entergy New Orleans Gas Operations is currently working to find, control and repair those gas leaks where the water has receded.

As crews were dispatched to restore power, problems arose with the two-way radio systems used in the field. Johnson’s staff worked to figure out where the problem was – Was there power to the transmitting equipment? Was there a tower down? Was there problem with the fiber link? – and resolve it.

The weeks following hurricane Katrina and the way Johnson’s team was able to respond to the evolving disaster is a testament to the importance of disaster recovery planning. But what’s most remarkable is not how well a frequently-practiced and well-executed plan worked, but what the people executing that plan had to endure as they carried it out.

Johnson is the first to tell you he’s one of the lucky ones – the damage to his house on the west bank of Jefferson Parish can be fixed. Not everyone was so fortunate. The first few days after Katrina, Entergy was also focused on locating its 2,800 employees based in New Orleans, including the 700 men and women working in IT. They were scattered to the four winds. "One of the first things we did was to try to contact everyone using our network of supervisors beginning on Tuesday to find out, ‘Are you ok?’ ‘Do you know the status of your home? Do you have any urgent needs that aren’t being met?" says Johnson. "There were quite a few people we couldn’t find at first." Ultimately everyone was located and there were no fatalities.