Every thing about Texas is larger than life. It is a giant of a state, and it had a giant of a storm. Hurricane Ike was about 600 miles in diameter. It took it over 12 hours from the time it hit until the time it moved out of the area. The city of Houston is unbelievably big too. I landed at Hobby Airport on the south end of the city and am staying at a hotel on the north end of the city about 50 miles away.

However, the biggest thing in Texas is the size of the hearts of the people living there and their hospitality. The folks of CenterPoint Energy (CPE) are fantastic to say the least. We contacted them prior to coming to Houston and asked if it would be possible for us to talk with some of their executives, talk with workers, and visit areas being restored. We explained we did not want to be in the way in any manner; that is when the Texas-sized hospitality kicked in. We were welcomed with open arms and given the run of company. We were told they consider T&D World their magazine (talk about the warm fuzzy feeling – “it doesn’t get any better”). The folks at CPE want to share their story with the industry and help get information to other utilities that might be faced with a future Ike.

CPE is in the midst of one of the biggest restoration projects ever. My friend Doug White, CPE consulting engineer said, “Every employee has stepped up to do whatever is needed to get the system restored. There is a regulatory attorney working loading trucks with the supplies needed by crews in the field. Retired employees have volunteered asking where they are needed. It is an enormous task.”

Doug told me, “CPE has roughly 2.6 million customers in their service area (about 5,000 square miles). After the storm hit, 2.1 million were without power.” CPE ‘pulled the trigger’ Friday when it was certain Ike was heading right for the Houston area calling for help. Roughly 4000 transmission and distribution line workers and 4000 tree trimmers responded to CPE’s request for mutual assistance restoration workers. People are not worrying what hat they wear during the normal work day; they are part of the team now. They are working anywhere from 14-hour plus days to get the power back on for the people in their service territory and then going home to deal with their own storm-related problems.”

It is very humbling to be with these folks. I haven’t met anyone yet I would not consider a hero in this war against the storm aftermath.

I was up at 4:30 and headed to the outdoor showers. I actually had a great night’s sleep on a cot in this humongous tent that was the largest I’ve ever seen. I think the darn thing could hold 300 people. It was immense. In case no one warns you, these tents can be freezing at night depending on where you pitch your cot, because they are air conditioned and conditioning that space is uneven at best. Anyway, I came prepared with two cushions from my couch, two pillows, two sleeping bags and a blanket. I was snug as a bug in a rug. Of course, I learned this lesson the hard way at Katrina and I now know to take jackets and blankets regardless of the heat. I followed up the shower with two cups of coffee and a breakfast of bacon, eggs and biscuits and I was a new man.

At six I decided to trail two Pike line trucks out of the Cold Springs fairgrounds where Sam Houston Electric Cooperative had us bivouaced. We drove for maybe fifteen minutes till the line trucks pulled into a gas station. I walked up and said hello. Adam Cantu introduced himself as a lineman A, following with, “I was wondering who was following us”. His sidekick Kevin Tyler introduced himself as “ a grunt”. We got coffee and I then followed the two trucks deep into the country with heavy stands of pine all about. I wasn’t worried about getting lost because, unbeknown to my boss, I had bought a Garmin Nuvi on the company credit card just for this trip. And I needed to get lost at least once so I could get back with the help of my Nuvi and thus justify the purchase.

We pulled over to the side of the road to work a tap of six or seven spans that ran out to a cabin in the woods. Mark Martin drove up and the crew assembled for a strategy session on how to attack this down line repair. While the crews were positioning, Martin filled me in on the history of Pike. He said, did you know that Floyd S Pike started Pike in 1945? His son Buddy took over. I joined Pike sometime in the eighties. And Eric Pike, Buddy’s son who runs the company started out working in the company and did line work along with the rest of us.

The first two spans had already been cleared up the day before and Mark invited me to hop in his pickup to drive through the woods to the other end of the tap. Mark is a working foreman and clearly loves the work.

With Kevin’s help, Mark picked up the triplex secondary. The crews had already pulled the line out along the route the day before so Mark ran a pull rope around a sheave and Kevin tied the rope to the back bumper of the truck. The truck was pulled forward to take most of the slack out of the line. Mark finished the job with the chain hoist and used a clamp to secure the #4 ACSR. The linemen then tied the conductor to the insulators with copper tie wire at each pole, climbing where they were unable to locate the buckets because of downed trees. The crew then lifted the ground wire using the same techniques. After finishing hooking up the transformer and installing a lightning arrestor, the crew spread out to clean up construction debris.

Mark offered to drive me back to my car and told me a little more about Pike. “We cut no corners on safety. When I asked how I was doing, my boss challenged me with, ‘Are you working safe? Have you had any injuries? “ He said, “You work safe and we’ll make the money work”. “I am never pressured to pick up the work” Mark is convinced that by working safe, you actually get more accomplished because you plan better and you have less rework and less

Wednesday afternoon

I was driving north on Highway 59 coming out of Livingston. Freddy was eating lunch when I came up to the cab of his bucket truck. He offered me what I believe was a ham and cheese sandwich and I gratefully accepted.

Freddy told me this T&D Solutions crew had been given feeder 182 coming out of Israel Substation. Freddy and Aaron (another T&D Solutions lineman was working a 7200kV single phase circuit that ran along the highway, picking up down laterals as they came to them. Aaron had a back pocket full of automatic splices he was using up as he worked his way along.

Supervisor Jerry Badillo told me he had four crews on this circuit that had come up from the Rio Grande Valley to work Ike. They had been working this same circuit since the Monday after Ike hit and had already picked the main line coming out of Entergy’s Substation outside Livingston.

A tap line that went across highway 59 was down. Over time, five buckets gathered. I was soon to find out why this crossing required such a coordinated effort.

The police were called to provide traffic patrol and while we waited for them to arrive, the situation was explained to me this way:

We really feel uncomfortable stopping traffic because some people don’t stop and we find it safer to go overhead.

Aaron located one truck near the first pole with the conductor reel suspended near the pole so the reel could be rotated while line was unspooled. Another bucket was placed on the right side of the divided highway. Freddy located the next bucket in the grass in the center of the divided highway. The next bucket was located on the other side of the highway. Another bucket was located between the road and the second pole.

The conductor was fed around a sheave mounted off the first pole and the Aaron essentially used his bucket like an arm to take the conductor from the pole to the lineman waiting to take it from there. The second lineman then took the cable from the first lineman and maneuvered the bucket until he could hand the conductor off to the third. In this way the line was essentially walked in the air from lineman to lineman until the highway was traversed.

Then one end of the conductor was clamped down, the slack was taken out of the line with a chain hoist and the other end was attached. Voila! Problem solved.

The foreman, Manny, came up to me and asked “What did you just see”?

I saw symphony in motion.

“You saw teamwork built on trust and respect”, is what Manny told me.

We parted ways as the crew headed down the highway and I made my way back to the Sam Houston offices in Livingston.