A branching, choose-your-path tabletop built for an electric utility in fire country. A wind event is coming, and the safest thing for the grid may be the most dangerous thing for the people who depend on it. Six shared injects establish the threat, then the room's own decision — shut off power to 140,000 customers, or keep the lines energized — sends the exercise down one of two independent, fully-scripted paths. Both of them put lives at risk.
Every detail below is fictional — specific enough to feel real in the room, and generic enough to map onto almost any organization whose infrastructure can cause the disaster it's trying to survive.
An investor-owned electric utility serving 1.1 million customers across mountain and foothill counties in the western United States, with ~4,800 employees and about 14,000 miles of power lines — 40% of them in high fire-threat areas. Its service territory includes small towns with one road in and out.
Sierra Vale can preemptively shut off power when wind and fire conditions are extreme. Doing so prevents its equipment from starting fires. It also cuts power to people on home oxygen, to water pumps, and to cell towers. Sierra Vale has done it twice before. Both times, it was criticized — once for doing it, once for not doing it soon enough.
Six injects, delivered over the first 44 hours, that every player experiences regardless of what the room ultimately decides. This phase ends with the decision that splits the exercise in two.
Forecasters issue a red flag warning for Sierra Vale's foothill counties: gusts to 60 mph and humidity as low as 8% for 36 hours starting in two days. The vegetation is the driest it has been in a decade.
Meteorology projects that 31 circuits serving about 140,000 customers will exceed Sierra Vale's shutoff criteria. The criteria are written as guidance, not rules, and the forecast could still change.
The affected area includes 3,200 medical-baseline customers who depend on powered equipment like oxygen concentrators, two hospitals running on generators, and a water district whose pumps need grid power.
Two county emergency managers object strongly. After the last shutoff, residents lost refrigerated medicine and a nursing home struggled to keep patients safe. Notification rules require advance warning to customers if Sierra Vale is going to shut off power.
Telecom carriers tell Sierra Vale that most cell towers in the area have four to eight hours of battery backup. After that, residents may lose cell service — including emergency alerts and 911 calls.
The wind arrives this afternoon. The room has two options: preemptively shut off power to 140,000 customers starting at noon, or keep the lines energized with field patrols, sensitive protection settings, and crews on standby. The room has to decide.
From here, the facilitator runs one of two fully independent scripts depending on what the room chose in Inject 6. Toggle between them below to see how each one unfolds — in a live session, players only ever see the one they earned.
The shutoff begins. Four circuits fail to de-energize remotely, and crews have to drive into high winds to switch them off manually.
The family of a medical-baseline customer calls: her portable oxygen battery will last three more hours, and they can't reach the community resource center because of road closures.
Cell towers begin running out of battery. Two counties report gaps in 911 service. Emergency alerts aren't reaching some residents.
A wildfire starts from an unrelated cause in a neighboring valley. Residents in the shutoff area are being told to evacuate — without power, and in some places without cell service.
The water district's backup generators fail at one pumping station. Pressure drops, and the district issues a boil-water notice for 18,000 residents.
The wind has passed, but every line must be inspected before it can be re-energized. Crews need about 36 hours to patrol 4,000 miles of line. Residents ask why their power isn't back yet.
The governor's office publicly criticizes the scope of the shutoff and asks the state regulator to review it.
Inspection crews find nine power lines brought down by the wind — lines that would have been energized if Sierra Vale had kept the power on.
Another wind event is forecast in five days, slightly less severe. Shutting off power again is the safer choice for the grid. Communities are exhausted, and officials are already warning against it. The room has to decide.
The state regulator requires a post-event report. The board asks what it would take to reduce the size of future shutoffs: more weather stations, sectionalizing devices, and undergrounding lines — billions of dollars over a decade.
Field crews patrol the highest-risk circuits, and protection settings are tuned to cut power instantly when a fault is detected. Control room operators are watching the weather station feeds closely.
Sensors detect a fault on a line in a remote canyon. Protection equipment cuts the power as designed, but crews can't reach the line to see what happened.
A fire is reported near the canyon line. Within an hour, it has burned 2,000 acres and is moving toward a town with one road out. Evacuation orders are issued.
With more fires possible, Sierra Vale shuts off power to 200,000 customers immediately — more than the original plan, and with no advance notice. Medical-baseline customers get no warning.
The fire threatens 600 structures. Shelters fill, and residents are posting photos of the fire next to Sierra Vale's power lines.
Sierra Vale's stock falls 30%. Credit rating agencies put the utility on watch for a downgrade, citing potential wildfire liability.
Fire investigators ask Sierra Vale to preserve the canyon line equipment as potential evidence. Plaintiffs' firms are already holding community meetings.
Families who lost homes ask Sierra Vale for help with temporary housing. Counsel warns that direct assistance could be seen as an admission of responsibility.
The room must decide whether to announce a voluntary assistance fund for affected residents before investigators determine the cause — or wait for the investigation. The room has to decide.
The state regulator and the board both ask to see the Day 0 decision record: what the shutoff criteria said, who decided to keep the lines on, and why.
The two paths are built to converge on the same hard questions, arrived at from opposite directions.
The full Sierra Vale scenario — every inject, both paths, and the debrief questions — is available as a print-ready PDF you can share with your own team or board. Enter your email and we'll take you straight to the download.
The Sierra Vale exercise is a sample — built to show how a natural disaster simulation can branch on the decision that actually matters, and stay uncomfortable in both directions. A simulation built for your organization starts with your infrastructure, your communities, and your hardest trade-offs.
Exercises often require access to crisis plans, escalation structures, and vulnerabilities. That material is handled in confidence, and NDAs are available on request.
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