Our industry has a history of pulling together in times like these. Of course our linemen and tree trimmers are on the front lines doing battle with downed conductor and splintered poles. And I am so proud of every one of them. But we have so many heroes to be thankful for, from the guys who pitch the tents to the cooks who work 20 hour days to make the meals. So many things have to come together. I met so many people who were working their storm assignments whether in Lufkin, Livingston, Houston or Galveston. Each utility had and worked their response approach plans, whether Oncor, Sam Houston Electric Cooperative or CenterPoint Energy. I talked with inspectors, dispatchers, foremen; call center operators. Everyone pitched in. And I saw utility linemen from all over the country who set aside their day jobs to come help out. It gives you goose bumps seeing these guys work so hard. It is truly a band of brothers.

And of course the contract line workers and tree trimmers brought in assistance on a massive scale; and a massive effort was needed as Hurricane Ike took dead aim on Houston and inflicted damage all across the CenterPoint service territory. A lot of these folk came over to help out coming straight from the battle lines drawn by Gustav.

The supply chain was stretched thin, partially due to all the materials and supplies already taken out of the system by Hurricane Gustav. But it was holding. Kudos to the factory workers who worked nights and weekends to make sure the linemen had the fuses and cutouts, the wire and transformers, the bolts and connectors they needed.

But in closing, I’d like to acknowledge the real unsung heroes, our families left behind to cope. Particularly those left without power who must figure out how to make it on their own. Our wives and daughters, our husbands and sons, who support us, who hold our families together while we do battle.

I’d like to close by sharing this letter that CenterPoint lineman Danny Teague said I could print. It is from his wife who wrote it after being treated less-than-kind by someone in the parking lot of a grocery store:

“Every wife of a lineman knows of the pride and danger that surrounds the men that we love and hold near and dear to our hearts. We occupy our lines with work, family, education and other things to keep our worst fears at bay. As my children come to me with questions of doubt, I feel compelled to write.

“I thought at one time my biggest hero was my father. But as I have grown into and married into this family or brothers that I have come to love and respect, I find myself hiding my worst fears from them and myself. The man I have had them build their trust on and tell all their problems to, and restore organization to our family structure to, has been away. I hear their cries of ‘Mommy, where is Dan Dan? When is he coming home?’ All I can do is occupy their time with games, outside time, movies and chores.

“My wonderful husband found time to talk to my daughter from the field. But as she still talks about it in a daze and fantasizes about how great her stepfather is, she still reminds me of the ever-present danger that is bestowed on every lineman out there.

“I had a discussion with someone in the parking lot of a grocery store, who asked me, ‘When are the lights going to be on?’ I proudly told them that my husband worked for CenterPoint Energy and he and the rest of the crew are working 16+ hours just to get the power back on. He said, ‘Well, I bet you have power.’ All emotions ran out of me. I told this man how it really is. I told him that since the storm has come, I am the one to make sure that my kids and I have everything we need because my husband is gone. I start the generator, put the gas in it, go find gas, put the tree back up, check the attic for leaks, cut the grass, maintain the pool, kill the snakes in the backyard, cook for my children, make sure they are bathed and well. My husband has enough energy to take a shower and go to bed. The only thing I have is the prayers that I beg of God to bring him and the rest of the brothers off the pole, out of the bucket, off the street and home to their families.

“I live day in and day out, like so many other linemen’s wives, without our loved ones. Everyone should respect what they do for us. My husband does not carry a weapon, he does not pilot a ship or carry out government orders, but every day, he and his brothers risk their lives to ensure that we have the very basics of what we call life. Thank God, and then you better thank a lineman. They care for your family as well as mine. I am the very proud wife of a CenterPoint lineman.”

Autumn T. Davis

Gene - It’s good to be home

Time is funny, sometimes it just drags by. At other times, you wonder where it has is gone. This past assignment to cover the storm restoration from Ike was a blur. It seems more like months have past since Rick told me to pack my bags and get to the Houston area, but it passed by in the blink of an eye. We met with the folks at CenterPoint energy, went to the work sites, visited a lot of hard-hit communities, and a bunch of other activities. What an adventure. I am so proud of our industry. I met linemen from just about every state. They had one thing in common – pride in what they were doing. They worked 16 hour days continuously (day after day since the hurricane moved out of the area) getting the power back on.

I feel a little guilty about being home now and leaving my new friends to the huge task of completing the restoration. But the next assignment is waiting. Next week I will be back at the airport catching another plane to a new job. Right now I am reviewing the photos I took. They bring back a lot of memories and will be used to illustrate the hurricane supplement that will be written over the next month or so. It is good to be in the desert again – happy trails.

UtiliCon’s Michael Daniel
closed in the cutout
that energized back lot line.

We were driving down another residential street in Pasadena, Texas, and ran into a UtiliCon line crew working another back lot line. This crew had put grounds on the line earlier and were back to remove the grounds once the Lewis Tree team had finished removing overhead branches and limbs from the line. In a few minutes, the all-clear was sounded and lineman Jonathan Williams climbed into his bucket truck and headed up to take off the grounds. Once the grounds were off, UtiliCon’s Michael Daniel closed in the cutout.

While the team was cleaning up and retracting their outriggers, a lady from the local church, Sandra Schaeffer, showed up with bags of peanut butter cookies and Capri Sun drinks. She told us, “The ladies from our church baked these cookies, and we wanted to thank the Ike workers we can find for their hard work.”

Sandra Schaeffer showed up
with bags of peanut butter cookies
and Capri Sun drinks

It was 12:30 p.m. and we forgot it was lunch time. Cookies and Capri Sun helped tide us over until we could get us some lunch.

Kim Neyen appreciates
generator donated
to help son Alvin on a defibrillator.

Instances of generosity abound in times of trouble. Kim Neyen was one such recipient of kindness by others. Kim’s house was out of power, and he wasn’t sure when it would come back on. Kim’s son Alvin has serious health problems, having already had three heart surgeries, and he was hooked up to medical devices that required power. Kim, who worked at the Thomas & Betts steel pole facility outside Houston, was thrilled to hear that employees of one of its steel suppliers had bought Kim a generator that he hooked up so his son could stay home. The suppliers also provided 1000 gallons of diesel to run Thomas & Betts backup generators so the company could stay up and running.

Ike has delivered incredible damage but in the midst of hardship we see incredible instances of concern and help, whether from company to company or person to person.

Why on earth would anyone put the building’s electrical vault on the 27th floor? Didn’t they realize when the electricity was off, the elevators would not run? Didn’t they stop to think the stairwell would be pitch-dark? Someone should suggest architects be a little more like engineers (smarter)! That was the question I was asking myself as we climbed the steps Sunday morning, but maybe I should have been asking myself how the heck did I get into this situation. I guess it can be explained as a “guy-thing.”

CenterPoint crews were energizing the tallest building on the island, which required someone going up to the 27th floor and closing the breakers. Rick started picking on Chuck Riddle (CenterPoint Energy’s key accounts manager) about the young kids on the crew. One thing led to another and somehow we were climbing up one heck of a lot of stairs in the dark with no ventilation. We made it to the top, hot, sweaty, and smelly.

We energized the building and were looking forward to the ride down in the elevator. Unfortunately, the building manager said we could not until it had been tested and certified for use. I think I am going to report all of them to AARP. Dang, I have socks older than most of the guys in that stairwell.

Photos:

The building

The vault on the 27th floor

The devastation from Ike is hard to take after viewing it first hand hour after hour. We found ourselves on Pelican Island by mid-morning. The road became impassable at one point, but we wanted to take a look at ships on the sand, so it was time to go it on foot. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes attacked as soon as they found a warm body and of course we had left the repellant in the other car. Then our fortune changed. Mosquitoes can’t fly in winds above 15 MPH and all of a sudden the breeze picked up. What a relief. They announced the mosquitoes are so back with all the standing water they will start spraying today to try and control them a little before the residents come back on Wednesday. I hope they are successful. Those folks need a break.



They say storms can do strange things. There was an air compressor and tank sitting in the middle of the road. It looked like someone had left it there to do some work. There were also bricks and tile laying beside the road, but no house around for them to have been a part of – they were just sitting there. Rick found a brick with Texas carved into it. He also found a bench on the road and took a break with the brick. Then the moment was over and time to get back to work.

We were in the Moody Park Staging Area on Galveston Island filling our tummies with powdered egg omelets while getting a handle on the logistics for this staging area that was feeding and supplying the 500 some line workers on the island.

We sat down when Paul Marx introduced himself, saying “Welcome to Ground Zero.” Marx was a mess with humor intact, independent of the circumstances. Somehow a little levity made a big difference, without taking away from the seriousness of the moment.

Marx said, “Excuse me but I lost my voice yelling at those pole apes.”

“What?” I asked.

Those pole apes. Did it do any good? Not one bit. I asked what his experience was as he rode out the storm. He just looked bewildered when he tried to come up with words to describe the experience. I guess the best description would be the sound of a runaway freight train for eight or more hours.

“Were you in the basement?” I asked.

“No, we don’t have basements. I was at my dad’s house sitting on the back drinking beer.”

“Why were you on the back porch?”

“Cause that’s where the beer was.”

Across the table was pole ape Randy Bear who was working all day and then heading home to his wife who was having her own levels of stress as a superintendent (as I recall) in the schools system responsible for courses taken. I offered to work his sweet wife into an article on wives but he politely declined.

Just then my partner in crime, Gene Wolf, our staff intelligent grid guy and all around techno-nerd, said “I’m a sub ape.” Yep, Gene spent three and a half decades designing substations. This lab ape asked if we could travel over to the service center and see if we could locate CenterPoint’s yard ape.

Photo:

Paul Marks (ground ape) (L) and Mike Maxwell having breakfast before hitting Galveston Island.

I just talked to Keith Stapleton with Sam Houston Electric Coop. He shared some of the stats of the rebuild effort in the service territory in the Livingston Region — they had all 66,000 without power. As of today they, have 16,000 customers restored.

“Ike is easily twice as devastating as Rita, as it went straight up our system. We learned a lot from Rita and are getting our customers back at about the same speed even though the damage is much greater,” Keith said.

Sam Houston has 3,000 contractors working on their system. Keith provided me a map and wished me well . As I headed out to cover the crews, he suggested I post the Sam Houston website where they are updating twice a day so you can have the latest information: http://www.samhouston.net/storm_central/storm_central.html

On the way, I decided to push “shopping” on my Garmin NUVI, and was pleased to find there was a Walmart only one mile away. Understanding rain might be coming this way, I was hoping I could get umbrellas before they all got bought up. A sign out front said there were very few perishables, but I’m feeling pretty smug because I left with two bags of carrots and a bag of apples. I asked Nancy, the cashier, how it was going and if the customers were friendlier or grumpier than usual. She said, actually they are usually pretty nice and now even nicer. I told her I was looking for the prettiest cashier to take her picture and she was the one I picked. She wished me well and off I went.

Now I’m off to find Road FM62 off US route 59 where there is a lot of damage and a lot of crews.

I am awaking from a remarkably good night’s sleep considering I spent the night in a massive 10,000 square foot tent that handles 300 people. Because I’ve slept in one of these tents before, I was prepared. With a sleeping bag and two pillows from home, along with ear plugs (linemen snore), I slept like a baby. I awoke before dawn to the sound of snoring. One lineman was wandering around with his blanket wrapped around his head and body. He looked like a nun – but I expect that looks were deceiving. Over at breakfast, Eddie Deen was serving bacon and eggs, sausage, pancakes, fruit, juice, coffee and just about anything you wanted. It was awesome. I think I love Eddie Deen.

I sat down with Jeremy Koffel who had come down from Austin to help work the Lufkin area. Jeremy had been working with Quanta for a year as a groundsman. I asked Jeremy what he did before and he said, “ I was laying bricks in Pennsylavania.” Turns out that Jeremy was raised in Bloomsberg,Pennsylvania, not a half hour from where my relatives from my mother’s side live. Small world. Jeremy was working Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana before being reassigned here. When asked his most memorable experience, he said, “ You take electricity for granted until you lose it. I guess the main thing is people are so grateful when you get their electricity back.

I walked over to the line trucks and ran into Quanta digger-operator Jeff Williams. He had been with Quanta for two months. Before that he had been moving oil drilling equipment. Williams, with a big mustache had his head wrapped in a bandanna, with a cigarette in one hand and what appeared to be a beer in the other. “No man, I don’t drink no more.” He showed me the can and it was a Starbucks Double Shot Energy and Coffee drink. Now I would take that over a beer in a heartbeat. When asked about line work, Jeff said, “I like the hours better except when we are working storms and I am looking forward to going home.”

By now dawn had not quite broken, but with ice in the cooler and a box lunch, Jeremy and his crewmates were headed out to meet the day.

Photos:

Jeremy Koffel, Quanta Groundsman (L) and Mitch Griffin finish off breakfast before heading out.

Jeff Williams, Quanta Digger-Operator, slips off reflective vest so I can take a flash photo as dawn begins to break

Boyd Green greeted me in Lufkin, and we headed off to chase some crews working the storm. We didn’t have to go far. A pine tree fell between two back lot poles and with the help of all telecom and cable attachments, along with a little utility secondary, both poles came down.

Boyd arrived from the Dallas Ft. Worth area to help in the rebuilding efforts. He’s led storm efforts before, working Katrina in both Florida and in New Orleans.

On the road to a job site, Boyd told me that crews were mostly local having to come in from as far away as Midland, Texas. Crews from local contractors including Flowers, Chatman and Texas Electric were working the area.

Boyd put in some calls to the field while fielding others. Boyd managed to work the phone while working the tobacco between cheek and gum. Here is a sampling of the rapid fire conversation I picked up.

“Let me call Phillip. He sent me over here. Let me see what the name of this school is. It is Garrett Grade School. It’s not yours? Ok, then I got wrong information or misheard what he said.”

A few more calls and a few more turns and we found ourselves in a residential neighborhood where a big pine had fallen between two back lot power poles taking them both down.

Two Oncor crews were working together on this job. I was quite tickled to see an E Z Hauler 4100 located in the backyard. This is one slick device that is less than 36 inches wide and can be maneuvered in incredibly tight positions. We had done an article on what is essentially a backyard bucket truck before, but seeing one on the job site raises the goosebumps. Butch Douglas was in the bucket while Larry Mayfield was in hooks. They were working together on the same pole to put new primary and secondary up and to set the transformer. The smell of new creosote and the sound of a gas-powered drill bit brought back memories from my early days in the industry.



Over on the second pole Darryl Johnson was putting up insulators, tying on no. six copper, putting up triplex and nailing up the ground wire. Poetry in motion. I loved watching Darryl work.

I asked him how often he puts on his hooks. He said that sometimes he climbs two or three times a week, sometimes more. He had just come off a bucket job to do this pole job. Darryl has been a lineman for 11 years and by his countenance you could tell he loves what he does. The citizens of Lufkin love what he does too. Darryl told me “the customers have been real warm, thankful for what we’ve done.”

While the crews were putting the finishing touches on dressing out the poles, I went up to talk with the homeowners watching the work progress from their homes. I went up to the homeowner on her back porch and said, “I am writing about the power companies bringing your electricity back and want to know if you would ask a few questions.”

Not quite sure about me she said, “Maybe, maybe not!”

“How about if I ask a few questions and you don’t answer them if you don’t want to.”

So here is how the conversation went:

What’s your last name? “I’m not saying.”

How long have you been without power? “Since 7:00 Saturday morning.”

What was living through the storm like? “Not good. The big tree across the street fell down at 7:30 and it got really bad after that. I was totally scared to death.”

Would you like to meet Darryl, the lineman who is putting your power back on? “I’d love to.”

I quit taking notes right about here,but seeing the grin on Darryl’s face when Julie gave him a big hug was precious. Missing out I said, “Julie could you hug me like I’m your kin?” Now that was a hug!

As the power was being brought back on I asked Julie one last question:

Are you willing to tell me your last name? “It’s Wade.”

Photos:

Darryl Johnson ties in primary on new back lot pole.