Sally Stories
“I have never seen it this bad. It was a lot of rain that sat on top of us. When the wind kicked in, it took the trees down. The trees took down the power lines. That is what killed us. Especially the pine trees. When we have damage like this, Baldwin EMC is good about flooding contract crews in here and getting this up as fast as they can. We are assigned to substations and circuits. We are out here as soon as it is safe and go circuit by circuit. We are working 15 hours a day. I am working a circuit right now and taking off everything that has damage so we can make the repairs and heat it up.

I think Sally is worse than Ivan. I have a lot of damage at my house and wire on the ground, but I see my house at 4 a.m. when I am leaving and 9 p.m. when I come home at night. My wife and kids are doing the best they can. We have a roof over our head, a generator and a fan. We are okay

After 4 or 5 days people get tired of not having power. But they bring us food and water and take care of us. People honk at us all of the time to say thank you. We can’t just flip the switch and make it the power come back on. I think this makes people appreciative of power that is always there.”

“We are from North Carolina. They called us at three in the afternoon and we had to leave at six the next morning. This one is bad because it moved so slow. We get hammered by hurricanes in North Carolina.

It has been a while since a hurricane came through here. There was nothing to knock down the weaker trees. Luckily it has been cool here. Our PPE of rubber gloves and sleeves gets hot.

People start getting testy after a few days without power. Everyone’s power will come back on, it just takes time. The problem comes when a neighbor’s power comes on first. We are doing two to three days worth of work in a day. We are good at our job, but we aren’t arborists. There are some trees we can’t cut off the lines because it will cause bigger problems.

Firemen and policemen get the glory and we usually work in the shadows. Now people are glad to see us and have been kind and grateful. Electricity makes the world go around.”