Power in Numbers
Lineworkers Bring Hope, Find Kindness After Hurricane Helene
Paula Piatt
Penn Lines Contributor
HELP AFTER THE HURRICANE: Dustin Crum, in bucket, and Chris Peters, on ground, journeyman linemen for Northwestern Rural Electric Cooperative in Cambridge Springs, Pa., help with hurricane cleanup and service restoration in rural Georgia. Northwestern also sent crews to North and South Carolina.
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series about the power behind our power, Pennsylvania’s lineworkers. This month, we spotlight those who traveled south last fall to rebuild power lines in rural communities devastated by Hurricane Helene. Next month, in part two, we talk to their families, who make their own sacrifices to keep the lights on.
Last fall, Ross Thomas, a 22-year veteran lineman with Northwestern Rural Electric Cooperative (REC), got in his truck in Meadville and drove 840 miles to Georgia.
The experience, he admits, was surreal, seeming at times he had only gotten as far as Punxsutawney.
“It was Groundhog Day. Every day,” says Thomas, one of hundreds of cooperative lineworkers who provided mutual aid to communities devastated by Hurricane Helene. “You woke up, ate, went to the shop, got your stuff, met up with your tree crew and worked all day. At the end of the day, you go back to the shop, clean up all your stuff, eat, go to bed, get up the next day and do it all over again.”
The Category 4 storm made landfall in September, causing death and destruction from the Gulf Coast to the North Carolina mountains. More than 100 people died and 1.25 million rural electric cooperative members lost power.
“I’ve never worked anything like it; it was nine counties of devastation [in Georgia]. Everywhere, the grid was gone,” says Thomas, still marveling at the power of Mother Nature. Pennsylvania’s sporadic tornadoes, he adds, will occasionally blow out a section of line, but “we put everybody on it and get it going in a day or so. But this … it just went on and on and on. It was crazy.”
DEVASTATION: This scene shows just some of the damage in the territory covered by Blue Ridge Energy in North Carolina. Nearly 6,800 miles of the cooperative’s power lines were destroyed during Hurricane Helene. (Photo by Scott Rockwell, Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative)
'Unfathomable'
Thomas and his Northwestern REC crew joined lineworkers from 10 other Pennsylvania and New Jersey cooperatives to provide much-needed manpower down South — in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In Georgia, Satilla Rural Electric Membership Corporation — a co-op with 7,000 miles of line and 57,000 members — had to be completely rebuilt. In North Carolina, almost 80% of Blue Ridge Energy’s 80,000 members lost power following the destruction of 6,800 miles of power line.
“It was almost unfathomable,” remembers AJ Jablunovsky, chief lineman for REA Energy Cooperative, based in Indiana, Pa. He recounts seeing recreational vehicles lodged in trees 10 feet off the ground; roofs torn from homes and dotting the landscape; and foundations sitting empty, save for the tents pitched by homeowners awaiting help. “It was just hard to even comprehend.”
Local cooperative crew members — called “bird dogs” — would shepherd out-of-town crews to their next assignment, often sending GPS coordinates and photos to point them in the right direction. However, it was all “before” information.
“I was in the right place, but it wasn’t adding up,” Thomas says of one job. “Then, I see a pole laying on the ground with no wire. The transformer is still in the energized position, but with no wires hooked to it. And I look over this field, and there’s the house that used to be there with the wire that used to feed the pole that was now laying on the ground.”
Once “up the pole” — usually after they installed a new one — the surroundings became a bit more familiar.
“A lot of co-ops have the same specifications for their power line builds, so that helped,” explains Scott Rockwell, a journeyman lineman for Wysox-based Claverack REC, who spent a dozen days with Blue Ridge Energy. The Claverack crew, like the others, rolled in with their trucks and simply got to work.
“At first it seemed fairly similar, but then as you got into the more ‘out there’ places, it was devastating. The magnitude was greater than anything I’d seen,” says Scott Tubbs, a lineman with DuBois-based United Electric Cooperative. “Around here, you get a thunderstorm, and you’ve got a handful of trees blown down. But there, as far as you could see — in every direction — you had trees down, you had roads washed out. It was just … wow.”
The terrain of North Carolina and Georgia was also new.
“Their mountains down there are nothing like ours — they have real mountains. We were climbing straight up cliffs, and sometimes, you were holding on to the wire to pull yourself up the side of the mountain,” says Dave Gardner, another journeyman lineman with Claverack. “The concept was the same, but the terrain was completely different.”
Crews battled the remnants of wind and water, the likes of which they had never seen. On its way to a crest of 18.3 feet (well above the low of 2 feet only four days prior), the New River in Ashe County, N.C., swept poles and wires downstream.
“We had to cross the river with the wire multiple times,” Jablunovsky says. “Sometimes, they’d have a drone fly the string over for us or we would use a slingshot and a string. One day, I waded up the river to get the string; that was an experience. We’ve never done anything like that [in REA’s territory].”
HELP ARRIVES: Journeyman Lineman Scott Tubbs, second from left, and Crew Chief Dan Marshall, far right, of United Electric Cooperative pose with lineworkers from North Carolina’s EnergyUnited. Eleven Pennsylvania and New Jersey cooperatives were able to provide mutual aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. (Photo courtesy of Scott Tubbs, United Electric Cooperative)
'People who had nothing were giving it to us'
A master plan kept each crew busy, usually building on the last crew’s hard work — if not by fellow lineworkers, then by the heavy equipment operators who first rebuilt the roads. According to Chief Lineman Bryan Schrock of Somerset REC, the rebuilds began at the substation.
“The first crew there did all of the three-phase work,” he says. With the feeder lines up, Schrock’s crew then worked on the final supply, or tap, lines that would carry power to the utility poles once they were replaced.
“We just went down the road and every tap we came to, we just rolled it out and put it on.”
That is, if there was a home to connect it to.
“The pictures on the news, they didn’t do it justice,” Rockwell says. “Seeing it with your own eyes, it’s a different story. People’s homes were in trees, and there were numerous places you couldn’t even tell where the power lines were supposed to be.”
And here is where the story gets personal for the crews. Throughout their days, folks would come out of their dark homes, not to ask about their power, but to offer gifts. There were, in fact, many times lineworkers were greeted — truly greeted — by people who had no home left to energize.
“It’s the real deal,” says Schrock of southern hospitality. “They were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. For them to be out of power for three weeks and then just bending over backward to make you a meal [or to give you] anything you needed. We stayed at a church, and the kids made cards and put a Reese’s Cup or something on the bed every night … I went down to help those people, and they helped me.”
“This woman came out and gave us some bags of pecans,” recalls Thomas, who was schooled on the pronunciation, which is “pec-ANS.”
“I asked her where she lived and she said, ‘Over there.’ I had to tell her, I didn’t know if we were even going to get to that today, but she said, ‘Well, here you go. We sure appreciate what you’re doing.’ Who does something like that?”
Apparently, most of the people the crews met.
“They were acting like we were the ones in need, always offering us water and things,” Rockwell says. “There were days (the local cooperative) would send us with a bag lunch and we didn’t even get to eat it because everybody was bringing us food.” Local fire companies delivered barbecue lunches, he recalls, and churches — “there seemed to be one on every corner” — were offering meals all day long.
“We got this one line on, and a guy comes out with a basket his three young daughters made. And his wife made a card, and they all signed it: ‘Thanks to the linemen for getting our electric on,’ ” Thomas says. “So, you just take it and say, ‘Thank you,’ but you’re thinking, ‘Are you sure you don’t need this?’ People who had nothing were giving it to us.”
READY TO GO: The crew from Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative gets ready to go to work in North Carolina. They are, from left: Journeyman Lineman Scott Rockwell, Crew Chief Brandon Griffiths, Journeyman Lineman Dave Gardner, Crew Chief John McKernan, Journeyman Lineman Leonard Fowler and Apprentice Lineman Tanner Kenney. (Photo by Scott Rockwell, Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative)
Man camps and making a difference
At the end of each day, the lineworkers would roll back to their accommodations, which varied depending on the location. Crews assigned to North Carolina lodged in motels and short-term rentals that had been reserved ahead of the storm. Others bunked in churches.
The guys in Georgia stayed at a man camp, where circus-like tents housed up to 500 lineworkers. In another, food was served, and semi-trailers offered showers and laundry service. All lineworkers were fed breakfast (usually by the local cooperative), sent out with a lunch and returned to a full meal at dinner.
“They provided you with everything you needed,” Thomas says. “The cots were something, though — 30 inches wide by 6 feet long. It was tough for our one guy … he’s 6-5.”
They weren’t on the cots for long, though. Sixteen- to 18-hour days were the norm; not all of them seemed fruitful.
“You might work a whole day and get five people in power,” recalls Schrock, who was stationed in Georgia. Scott Tubbs saw the same thing in rural North Carolina.
“The very last day we were there, we put up 12 spans of primary [line] and four or five spans of neutral wire. We didn’t get anybody turned on,” he says, with a bit of resignation in his voice. A new crew from United Electric provided relief and worked another day or two to restore 20 members.
But the work did bring satisfaction — words and phrases like “helping,” “making a difference” and “rewarding” were common when the lineworkers spoke of the experience.
“You really feel like you’re making a difference in someone’s life. We work in a very skilled trade, and you’re happy to be able to use your skills and knowledge to be able to bring a little bit of light to these people’s lives,” says Claverack’s Dave Gardner, remembering people clapping and saluting as lineworkers would roll through a neighborhood. “It was awesome to see, and it made the long days and hard work worth it. I would do it again — in a heartbeat.”
As would the others who made the trip south.
“It was a very, very humbling experience,” Jablunovsky says. “I watched a lady just break down in tears when we pulled into her lane one day; she was just so excited to see the truck.”
LENDING A HAND DOWN SOUTH: The following Pennsylvania and New Jersey cooperatives were able to provide assistance: Adams Electric Cooperative; Central Electric Cooperative; Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative (REC); New Enterprise REC; Northwestern REC; REA Energy Cooperative; Somerset REC; Sussex REC; Tri-County REC; United Electric Cooperative; Valley REC. (Photo by Ross Thomas, Northwestern REC)
Brothers on the line
And the opportunity to work with their southern colleagues was a bonus. There are a lot of new Facebook friends today because lineworkers are lineworkers, no matter their home cooperative.
“When you work with someone from a different area, it’s like having a brother next to you; you don’t miss a beat,” Rockwell says. “It’s just a different type of career; there’s a camaraderie there. Even when you’re with a guy from another area, you just find a way to work together.”
Working alongside their brothers from the South also provided an opportunity for a little cultural exchange. Georgia lineworkers discovered they had “cricks” running through the valleys, and the Northerners learned that “up yonder” is about a mile and a half.
“After three or four days, I found myself developing a southern accent,” Tubbs says with a laugh.
Bringing the crews together for meals to start and end the day only strengthened their resolve and brotherhood.
“Every morning, as we would have breakfast, one of the linemen would give a blessing and spoke of a lineman’s heart. When it came time to help, all those guys, all far away from home, they never batted an eye,” Jablunovsky says. “The [local co-op crewman] who was leading us around, said to us one night, ‘Do you mind staying a little longer? We’re so close.’ None of the guys even hesitated — they just didn’t.”
While hoping never to see that devastation again, they know the possibility sits on the horizon, as it did on one of the last nights Schrock worked in Georgia. He remembers watching Hurricane Milton come ashore from his perch on a power pole.
“We were working on the first [hurricane], and then the second one hit,” he says of Milton as it slammed into Siesta Key, Fla., on Oct. 9 at about 8:30 p.m. “We didn’t get a drop of rain, and the sky that night was crazy red — just an unbelievable, beautiful sky — but we knew what was happening.”
And somewhere, some lineworker was preparing to do it all over again.
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