Stormy Weather

Sixty mile per hour winds caused extensive damage and outages yesterday. At the height of the outage situation, approximately 60,000 customers were without power. Now there are less than 6,600 individual homes and businesses without power. It is estimated that all outages will be worked by Friday morning.

MLGW has a current outage map linked from its home page so that customers can see where crews are working.

Hundreds of employees have been working around the clock to restore service to customers affected by downed trees and will continue to do so until all customers have power.

I got to put on a hard hat for the first time today and go see one of the crews in action. Six men were deployed to replace three downed utility poles in a neighborhood behind the Raleigh Springs Mall. They worked quickly and with precision, taking no time to chat or idle. It was clear that they had one common goal: to restore power to the neighborhood as fast as possible.

Dana Rebik of ABC24/CW30 was on the scene to cover the outage. She spoke with the owner of the adjacent house who said that the utility pole in her yard snapped at about 4:30pm yesterday. She was very happy to see the crew and said she and her elderly husband had been managing just fine with candles. Fortunately, their gas heat was still working.

As I stood by in my hard hat, wool coat, and wool sweater watching the men in short sleeves climb poles and dig giant holes, I gained a new appreciation for my fellow employees.

And my desk job.