Nashville's recovering from Winter Storm Fern, which left 45,000+ customers without power over a week after the January 25 ice storm. Nashville Electric Service faces criticism for preparation failures and slow mutual aid deployment. Full restoration targets February 9.
The infrastructure failure created an unexpected IT support burden: wireless peripherals reconnecting incorrectly after extended power loss.
The problem is straightforward but widely reported. When desktops lose power for days, wireless keyboards and mice—particularly Logitech Unifying devices—pair with whatever's available. Power returns, users can't log in, and help desk tickets multiply.
The fix is manual: disconnect the peripheral from the device it found during the outage, force re-pairing with the original system. Logitech's Unifying receivers require software reconnection; Bluetooth devices need manual unpairing. Neither happens automatically.
This matters because it's invisible in disaster recovery planning. Organizations plan for data center failover and backup power, but few account for the support load when hundreds of wireless peripherals need manual intervention simultaneously.
Nashville businesses are documenting storm impacts for insurance claims. IT departments should track these peripheral issues—not because they're major failures, but because they represent unplanned support hours during recovery when teams are already stretched.
The pattern repeats after every major power event: wireless infrastructure assumptions break under conditions nobody tests for. When power's out for a week, devices find new hosts. When it returns, someone has to manually fix it, one keyboard at a time.
Worth noting: wired peripherals had no such issues. The trade-off between convenience and reliability shows up clearly when infrastructure fails for extended periods. Some organizations may reconsider wireless-only policies for critical workstations.
NES restored power to 172,400 customers and repaired 234 of 604 broken poles. The wireless keyboard reconnection problem will outlast the power restoration by days.