October
2005
Katrina
Killers
WEMC
doing its part to help
“These
are the most appreciative people I've ever seen. They came up
to us all day wanting to know if we needed anything and thanking
us for what we were doing.”
That's
what Apprentice Line Technician Ben Powell said about the customer-owners
of Southwest Mississippi
Electric Power Association (SMEPA). Powell and 11 other Walton
EMC employees spent a week at the Lorman, Mississippi electric
co-op helping them recover from Hurricane Katrina.
After
the storm, none of the 25,000 customer-owners over the co-op's
nine counties had power. To complicate matters, every one of the
SMEPA's substations was off line.
“We
were lucky that the ground was dry,” said WEMC Line Technician
Keith Kirk, “and we could take our trucks wherever we needed.
That made our work quicker. But we've 
never
had to worry about generators before like we did there. Everybody
has one.”
Improperly
connected stand-by generators can put dangerous high-voltage electric
current back on power lines that should otherwise be dead.
Kirk
and Powell tell stories of the hard times being endured by area
residents.
“Gas
is a problem,” said Kirk. “Cars were lined up for a mile to get
gas. People stayed in line even when the station ran out to wait
for the next delivery. One man told me he stayed in line eight
hours to buy five gallons of gas.”
But
Kirk said stations are not gouging consumers. “The price there
was lower than back home.”
The
crews felt fortunate to have a motel room to stay in after 16-hour
workdays. Most of the other guests at their hotel were people
who escaped from Louisiana destruction. By the time the crews
left, SMEPA had power restored to all its customer-owners.
At
press time, the second wave of WEMC crews are at Pearl
River Valley Electric Power Association in Columbia, Mississippi,
near Hattiesburg. Reports from the area indicate that damage is
more severe than in Southwest Mississippi.
Look for a complete report on hurricane
assistance in an upcoming Realite issue.
Read
other articles in this month's Realite:
