The caravan of trucks from New England was a welcome sight as it rumbled through North Carolina's Appalachian passes after Hurricane Helene's torrential beating in late September.

Rural utility officials had a disaster on their hands like none in memory. But as badly as they needed help, some were skeptical: How good were these Northern linemen and outside construction workers with IBEW cards?

"It was kind of like, 'You'd better be able to pull your weight,'" said Boston Local 104 lineman Leo Barletta, a foreman for D&D Power who made the trip with more than 30 brothers from his company and fellow signatory contractor Northern Power.

Any doubts disappeared as soon as local officials saw the IBEW crews in action.

"Those guys were awesome," said Rocky Flemming, an operations manager for the French Broad Electric Membership Corp., a co-op with 42,000 customers in five counties north of Asheville, N.C. "They were so thorough and knowledgeable. I'd recommend them to anyone."

Their first stop was two hours south in the town of Highlands, where electrical superintendent Joe Allison said, "All I had to do was point where to go, and they knew exactly what to do."

With some 25 downed poles and 33 blown transformers, it wasn't the group's biggest job. But the extra hands were a godsend to Allison's small department.

"There's me and five other guys to try to keep the lights on for the town," he said. "It was overwhelming with all the damage that we had. They were a great help — excellent crews, very easy to work with and very well educated."

The good will went beyond utility leaders. Entire communities embraced the visitors, especially in an area of French Broad where IBEW members spent October camping in a school gymnasium.

When the last crews left Mars Hill Elementary School on Nov. 8, "there were very few dry eyes," Principal Kristina Lowe said.

Despite catastrophic flooding in their town, Lowe's staff and Madison County residents at large made sure the men were as comfortable as possible after chilly 16- to 18-hour days in the muck and mud.

From hot meals to clean clothes to toiletries and even handmade cards left on their cots by schoolchildren, everyone made them feel at home.

"Whatever they needed," Lowe said. "It gave us a real sense of purpose to be able to help them, and we really got to know them over the six weeks. It's like, 'I washed your laundry, we're friends now.'"

D&D workers headed back to Massachusetts in late October, arriving home with hours to spare before taking their youngsters trick-or-treating. Northern Power crews stayed until Nov. 8.

As their trucks pulled away, children and teachers lined the school's driveway to wave and cheer. A beaming boy at the tail end held a florescent sign saying, "Thank You Linemen."

"That was emotional. It felt great," said Local 104 member and Northern Power owner Jared Cormier, who managed the field operations for the IBEW team and has kept in touch with his new friends via texts and social media.

"To see everything back to normal for them and everyone happy, it made us feel like the long, hard weeks were worth it," he said. "That kind of closure and appreciation is something we don't always get."

Helene was the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season's worst and deadliest storm, hitting the Florida panhandle with Category 4 winds on Sept. 26 and dumping 42 trillion gallons of rain over the Southeast.

For as many wounds as it carved across the top of Florida and into Georgia, AccuWeather said Helene's most "infamous legacy will be the scar it left on the southern Appalachians."

It was unlike anything Flemming and Donald Webb, operations manager in the Burnsville district of French Broad, had seen in their decades-long careers.

"Every storm in the last 40 years put together was not as big as Hurricane Helene," Flemming said, noting that the utility's previous record of 120 storm-damaged poles had held since 2009.

Helene was 20 times worse, he said — "close to 2,400, 2,500 poles," with floodwaters that destroyed roads and swept away power lines.

"We had entire sections of main lines that were entirely gone, washed away," Webb said. "We thought it would be several months before everyone's power was back on."

Instead, IBEW members helped restore power for the majority of customers in a "time frame we never could have matched," as one official put it.

His quote was among the tributes in a letter to D&D's parent company, United Utility, from Tennessee-based contractor Phillips & Jordan, which oversaw the IBEW crews.

Shared with Local 104 Business Manager Brian Murphy and Second District International Vice President Michael Monahan, the letter is a source of pride. One official's quote in particular jumped out at them: "You have made us union believers."

The rural utilities ordinarily would have turned to other electrical co-operatives or nonunion contractors after a big storm. But those resources were largely tied up with Helene's wrath farther south.

"I think it definitely opened the door for them to reach out to union contractors," Barletta said. "Each day when we let them know what we'd accomplished, we got a lot of positive feedback."

The challenges were as steep as the terrain they climbed, with some areas so rough, muddy and debris-strewn that Local 104 members had to hike in to try to clear paths for the excavator.

"In the Appalachians, everything was elevation," said Ryan Grady, a D&D general foreman. "Nothing was easy."

But they held on to their sense of humor, stuck together and returned home full of good stories and gratitude — for their hosts at the school and for the bonds they formed with the initial skeptics who hired them

"Everyone was just overwhelmingly nice," Grady said. "They took such good care of us. And Rocky and the rest of the guys were great."

Flemming, one of the initial skeptics, said his first concern about hiring the Boston crews was money: "Compared to other guys, they were a little pricey." Then there was the union factor.

"I had a small exposure to union workers years ago, and I wasn't impressed," he said. "To be 100% honest with you, that's why I spent the first two days with them."

He observed how skilled the IBEW members were — and how careful.

"Even when things were grounded, they continued to wear their rubber gloves and sleeves," Flemming said. "Not only were they thorough and efficient, they were the safest crew I've ever worked with."

Webb also praised the IBEW members' safety habits, adding that "the other thing that impressed me was how self-sufficient they were."

"We were very thin on people we could send with them," Webb said. "In fact, I don't think we sent any of our [Burnsville] guys with them. They were very good about getting where they needed to go on their own and finding the materials they needed."

By doing their job so well, Local 104 members served as ambassadors for the IBEW and its Code of Excellence.

"Coming from a strong training background, the Code of Excellence is definitely first in everyone's minds," Cormier said. "Every morning, we talked about being down here, doing the right things, being our brothers' keepers, proper work area protection, quality craftsmanship and professionalism — a hard day's work for a hard day's pay."

They lived those values, and it showed.