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Even before meteorologists were able to pinpoint where Category 5 Hurricane Isabel would make landfall, utility crews from locals across the East, the South, the Midwest and Canada were already packing up their trucks and heading to the Mid-Atlantic region. These workers are often called on to endure weeks away from home, demanding physical work under extreme conditions and 16-hour days, but for many of them the rewards are incomparable: it’s as close to being a hero as many of us will ever come.

Contractor Riggs Distler provided on-site power.

"You come away feeling really good because you’ve helped people," said Orlando, Florida, Local 222 member James E. Bowen, executive vice president of Tennessee-based Dillard Smith Construction Co., whose company sent outside linemen to North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland to restore power after Hurricane Isabel hit in September. "But it takes intestinal fortitude. You’ve got to really want to do it."

After she hit the beaches of North Carolina and Virginia on September 18, Isabel churned Northwest, eventually leaving six million people in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Delaware and Pennsylvania without power, many for several days and some for weeks. Hundreds of IBEW members worked to repair the storm’s damage, including Richmond, Virgina, Local 50, and Washington, D.C., Locals 70 and 1900 which have utility and outside jurisdiction in the hardest-hit areas. Weeks after they restored power, IBEW members worked to permanently repair the quick fixes they wired at the height of the cleanup.

Isabel went down in the record books as among the costliest and most severe storms ever for several states and the utilities that serve them. Thirty-four people died, including four utility linemen. Emerging estimates of damage to homes, businesses and the electricity grid total into the billions of dollars.

Isabel also raised more questions about the effect of deregulation on the nation’s utility system, coming just five weeks after the summer blackout in the Northeast and Midwest prompted heightened recognition that the grid was suffering from underinvestment in maintenance and staff.

Locals 50, 70 and 1900 all agreed severe cutbacks in the deregulated environment are at least in part to blame for the extended outages that drew criticism from inconvenienced customers and public officials.

"The leadership of Local 50 believes that the devastation was maximized and the restoration effort has been hampered by the industry-wide response to the push to deregulate electric utilities since 1992," said a press statement released by Local 50, which represents 3,500 utility workers in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. "Since that time there has been a reduction of 25 to 30 percent of employees throughout the industry."

Local 70 Assistant Business Manager Bobby Smith said Baltimore Gas & Electric no longer has the manpower to easily recover from a storm like Isabel. "When something like this hits, there they are holding the bag, depending on everybody else to come in to help them," Smith said. "Local governments have an eye on all the big utility companies now because of this. A lot of people don’t think they were well prepared."

BGE President Frank Heintz said the storm was the worst ever faced by the utility.

Workers prepare to
set poles.

PEPCO, the utility that serves Washington, D.C. and parts of the Maryland suburbs, has suffered from withering criticism in the days and weeks following the storm that took out power to hundreds of thousands of its customers. Local 1900, which represents PEPCO’s line and maintenance staff, testified at a hearing investigating the company’s storm response.

"They can’t staff for a storm like that but if they had more overhead linemen here, the restoration would have been done quicker," said Local 1900 Business Manager John Coleman. "In 1993 we had approximately 209 overhead lineman at PEPCO. Now it’s 129. Now the system is larger and more complicated, and we have more customers than we had 10 years ago. They need more people here."

Coleman said the local will remain an integral part of the dialogue.

But whether they were local linemen or out-of-town help, IBEW members worked around the clock in the weeks after Isabel struck to restore the power that trees and winds knocked out.

At left, Dominion Virginia crew arrives to restore power.

Long-term climatic patterns combined to give the opportunistic Isabel the chance to inflict the most damage. Trees were weakened by a drought last year and then became unsteady from months of spring and summer rains this year. As a result, the hurricane-force winds sent thousands toppling onto power lines. Destruction was widespread. Charged with piecing the wounded distribution system back together as quickly as possible, the crews racked up hundreds of hours installing new poles, wires and insulators.

"The one sight people want to see when their power is out is a line crew, and I’m proud that so many of those crews are IBEW members," said IBEW International President Edwin D. Hill. "They travel great distances to work long, hard hours do whatever it takes—sometimes at great personal risk—to get the power flowing back to the public."

Bowen’s 34-person crew from Dillard Smith, all members of Local 222, spent nine days cleaning up after Isabel in Harford and Baltimore counties, north of Baltimore. They were among the more than 200 workers from the utility contractor whose nearly 30 pickups, bucket trucks, line trucks and skilled hands were welcomed in storm-ravaged areas.

Along with the hard hats, hot sticks, rubber gloves and sleeves that are the stock-in-trade of the utility lineman, they also came complete with everything else needed to keep their crews operating efficiently and safely, Bowen said. Safety and logistical personnel were there, along with vehicles boasting global positioning systems and the 21st century tools that allow them to keep doing their jobs when power is in short supply: such as laptop computers and cell phones charged by vehicle batteries. A storm center at the company’s headquarters is manned 24 hours a day while the storm team is out in the field.

On storm assignments, the safety person performs inspections, making sure people are wearing safety glasses, gloves and sleeves—arm protection that extends from the hand to the shoulder. Safety—always a vital consideration—becomes even more important when live downed lines combine with long hours, pressure to get the job done and out-of-town crews unfamiliar with local systems. Two days after the storm, two utility workers on the BGE system died on the job. The fatalities prompted BGE officials to round up crews at the staging area to reemphasize the importance of wearing the proper equipment and following procedures.

IBEW Safety Director Jim Tomaseski said training and heightened awareness of danger prevent more accidents from occurring at such chaotic times.

"Although we know the stress level is greater and the working conditions are much more hazardous, I think and hope it’s true the awareness level is up also because of the special attention that is paid to things," Tomaseski said, adding that IBEW training makes members more capable of adjusting to circumstances.

Local 222 member Burl Yates, a foreman on the Dillard Smith team, said although the danger is always greater doing "trouble" work, their safety training and procedures are almost instinctive. "It takes a lot of training to be a lineman," said Yates, a veteran 33-year member of the IBEW. "We practice our skills every day."

Bowen said on storm duty, the crew met at the staging area at 5 a.m. and hoped to quit for the day at 8 p.m., but didn’t usually manage to knock off until 10 or 10:30 p.m. Though it’s nice when grateful residents brought out lemonade or cookies, Bowen said, "You sure welcome going to sleep at night."

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