Four crews totaling 12 men from Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, Tipton, went to Florida to help out in the recovery effort from the effects of Hurricane Irma last week.
The assistance was given as a result of a request for help by the Sumter Electric Cooperative, (SECO Energy) Sumter, Florida. The crews have returned home safely, after assisting in power restoration efforts in the state of Florida, after the hurricane, according to information received from Co-Mo.
The Co-Mo crews were Shane Anderson, Jerry Vanderpool, Mike Dittmer, Duston Twenter, Nathan Graham, Grant Petree, Andy Roselius, Justin Martin, Craig Hutchison, Clay Becker, Glenn Baquet and Seth Verhoff. They took six Co-Mo trucks to the area of the coop's service.
The crews worked in SECO Energy's service territory just northwest of Orlando, Florida. The coop is one of the nation's largest distribution cooperatives. Of their 200,000 connected accounts, more than 130,000 were left without power after Hurricane Irma.
Co-Mo's linemen stayed in a hotel in Leesburg, which is in Lake County, about 30 minutes from the cooperative office. A bus would pick them up each morning at 5:30 a.m. and take them to the area of Webster, which is in Sumter County, to begin work. The linemen worked long days, returning to their hotel after 10 p.m. each night.
In the area they worked, there was apparently not a lot of what would be considered hurricane damage, but there was a considerable amount of wind damage.
"There were a lot of trees down," lineman Justin Martin said. He also commented that the meals were catered to feed a thousand or more at a time.
The Co-Mo Coop linemen replaced more than half a dozen broken power poles and replaced about 20 transformers, according to Martin.
When the wind is as strong as it was during the event, trees will break off and short out the transformers on the poles. That ruins them and they have to be replaced. There is a transformer manufacturing plant in Dyersburg, Tennessee.
"The people were really grateful we we there," Martin said.
Ken Johnson, the co-op's CEO/general manager, said: "One of our founding principles is cooperation among cooperatives. Just like during winter storm Rocky several years ago, when crews answered our calls for help, we were happy to send linemen to storm-ravaged central Florida. It's one of the great benefits of being part of a network of cooperatives nationwide."
Missouri's electric cooperatives responded to the call for help from electric cooperatives in the path of Hurricane Irma with 154 linemen from 26 systems. The Missouri crews left Sept. 12. Most crews returned Sept. 19.
Crews from across the state were split between Flint Energies, Reynolds, Georgia, GreyStone Power, Douglasville, Georgia and SECO Energy, Sumterville, Florida.
Earlier, the Missouri crews were committed to two cooperatives in South Carolina, Berkeley and Palmetto electric cooperatives. However, Irma's westward shift focused the pre-storm preparation to Georgia and Florida, where millions of people are without electricity.