Spring Proves Challenging
Rarely have I wished for summer to get here as much as I have this year.
While I personally prefer the milder temperatures we enjoy before summer, our springtime this year became very challenging. From January on — and especially March, April, and May — we have dealt with strong storms on an almost weekly basis. Some systems have even produced several tornadoes.
While in most cases the storms did not cause large numbers of consumers to lose power at any one time, the damage was isolated and severe. This means large trees were pushed over, multiple broken poles and wires on the ground. Damage like that takes time and ample manpower to repair, and if it happens at night, then the possibility of a return trip the next day to finish repairs.
The repeated rounds of wet and stormy weather week after week — and the work to repair the damage — have taken their toll on our crews and put us behind on our daily work. As I’m writing this column, the first week of June, I can still only hope that summer brings a reprieve and a chance for us to breathe.
The storms that caused these outages often moved through our area long after normal business hours, meaning power restoration occurred at night and on weekends.
Why is this important? Overall, working at night challenges our crews’ abilities to be effective. Working in the dark slows progress significantly. Outages are more difficult to find, and just getting into many locations becomes much more challenging and time-consuming. Finding and working with the necessary tools, equipment, hardware, etc., becomes more difficult. With these added complications come the increased chances of mistakes and injuries.
Storm restoration that occurs after hours is not only more challenging, but it can drive up our operations costs. For starters, the work is being done with overtime hours instead of normal hours. Restoration work that extends late into the night can also prevent our crews from accomplishing their normal work done during the day.
If crews work through the night restoring outages, they rest when they would be working their regular shift — and we want them to. Tired, fatigued workers are much more susceptible to making mistakes and getting injured. We want our people well-rested and working safely. In our industry, linemen and right-of-way workers who work more than 16 continuous hours must be given a rest period.
This industry certainly has no shortage of challenges. When Mother Nature decides she wants to contribute, all we can do is apply our restoration procedures, adapt to the constantly changing conditions, and repair the damage before the next round. Mother Nature always gets the last word.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with service. We hope you enjoy some beautiful weather and that your Fourth of July celebrations are safe and fun!