Nineteen Alabama cooperatives sent 161 staffers – a combination of construction crews, service crews, right-of-way crews and safety specialists – to assist co-ops in Georgia and South Carolina as these areas grappled with the ruins from Hurricane Helene’s overpowering winds and rains.
Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Florida on Sept. 26, then plowed through the South. The storm’s heavy rains and crushing winds left a path of damage that stretched over 500 miles.
Jeff Whatley, safety specialist with the Alabama Rural Electric Association (which publishes Alabama Living), accompanied some of the Alabama crews on this massive mutual aid effort. The damage, he says, was unlike any other storm he’s seen in 25 years of storm work in the cooperative world.
“The amount of physical plant damage was catastrophic. Tens of thousands of poles were broken. Wire was on the ground everywhere you looked. There would be miles of continuous damage on every road you drove down. The landscape is completely changed due to extensive tree damage,” Whatley says.
The storm knocked out electric service to an estimated 1.25 million co-op members.
The work to restore power was strenuous and difficult, Whatley says. Average workdays are 16 hours long.
“Wet conditions and tree-laden rights-of-way required poles to have to be climbed instead of using bucket trucks,” he says. “It would take several hours of cutting and clearing right-of-way to get up a single span of wire.” Crews would work days at a time and be able to energize only a handful of members.
As of Oct. 15, more than 17,000 co-op members were still without power in Georgia and the Carolinas.
As this issue was going to print, several Alabama crews were continuing to work in Georgia. The crews are constantly being rotated out with fresh employees, Whatley says.
Meanwhile, the damage the crews are seeing is heartbreaking, Whatley says. But everywhere they travel, they see appreciation, from handwritten signs to snack bags left on a truck seat.
“It’s a rewarding feeling for the linemen to know they are there to make a difference,” Whatley says.
