Friends in Need

On a warm Monday at the tail end of April, six members of United’s line crew bustled about the back parking lot of United Cooperative Services’ Burleson headquarters preparing their vehicles for a journey to East Texas.

Birds chirped, and a warm spring sun shined in a deep blue sky as the men cross-checked equipment and readied vehicles. The day’s beautiful conditions made it hard to remember that only three days before, a violent spring storm marched across Texas the preceding Friday night, only to be followed that weekend by another larger system spanning across the Plains States that spawned high winds, flooding, tornadoes and large hail as it headed east.

While United’s service territory was grazed by the storms, Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative—based in Douglassville, south of Texarkana—received a one-two punch from the system that brought torrential rains and lightning damage that knocked out power for more than 14,000 of its 27,300 members. United’s team would spend two days helping Bowie-Cass, and was one of eight restoration line crews from nearby cooperatives to assist the stricken co-op.
This was the first time that First Class Lineman Bryan Pounds had been on a restoration. He said he was looking forward not only to the professional education he’d receive from the experience, but also for the opportunity to help others in a time of need.

“I’m expecting that this is probably the cleanest I’ll ever be on this trip,” he said. “I just hope that I don’t see any gators or snakes. I’m hoping to learn a lot of new things, work with people here at United that I haven’t gotten a chance to work with, and hopefully meet some new people down there at Bowie-Cass while I’m out there.”

Thomas Smith, United’s line crew chief in the Granbury office, led the restoration crew. He said this was the sixth time in his career that he had volunteered to serve on a restoration crew.

“It’s very gratifying work,” Smith said. “You know, you see people that are in need, and some of these people being without electricity for several days. Everybody’s so grateful when you get the power turned on for them. It’s just what we do as a co-op. We always try and help others. United has been in their shoes before, and we know how important it is to get help from other co-ops. I’m just glad to do it.”  

While not the worst storm Bowie-Cass has ever experienced, the back-to-back severe weather definitely made the restoration one to remember, said Devin Skaggs director of marketing & member communications. She said the original four restoration crews from neighboring co-ops that came to assist after Friday’s storm had to turn around and leave the next day to restore power at their home co-ops when the second wave of storms came through.

“We had some serious, serious winds.” Skaggs said. “I don’t know what they’re labeling those winds, but they were serious. It knocked out transmission lines, and we had I think five substations off. It really looked like somebody had just scooped up all the lines and the trees and just balled them up and tossed them down. It looked like a bomb went off. So, a lot of tree damage, broken poles, broken crossarms and we had lightning damage too. We had well over 20 poles down, too.”

Along with the lines and poles snarled in broken tree limbs in the heavily wooded terrain, the heavy rains made traversing the swampy area even more challenging than normal, she said. United crews brought a track machine in order to pass across the rain-soaked ground more efficiently.

“The restoration crews are lifesavers,” she said. “I mean, we couldn’t do this kind of work without help from other cooperatives. We only have so many employees, and you have a massive storm come through and you have this large outage that you can’t do by yourself. Having sister cooperatives come in and help us is a serious morale boost, first off, and then having the extra hands it makes things go so much quicker. Our members get to see the cooperation among cooperatives, and that’s like another plus because that goes back to our Seven Guiding Principles, so that really helps us drive that value home.”

Oscar Carrete, a United journeyman lineman who assisted with the restoration, said the United crew spent most of its time within a 10-mile radius of a heavily wooded area west of Douglassville that was hardest hit by the storm. Most of the restoration work was far off the beaten path, he said, and crews were traversing across pastures or in rights-of-way far from paved roads.

“I enjoyed going out there and helping people get the power back on, especially for a small-town community,” he said. “We had a whole bunch of people drive by and thank us for coming out and said they appreciated what we were doing. They were just grateful to see people out working.”

United CEO Cameron Smallwood said assisting other co-ops to complete restorations is not only the neighborly thing to do, but also part of United’s guiding principles to cooperate among cooperatives.

“I am really proud of the volunteers who went to Bowie-Cass to help get their members’ electric service restored,” he said. “I’m proud of all the restoration crews who are willing to leave their families behind and go out there under treacherous conditions to help others in their time of need. That really does embody exactly what it means to be a lineman, and we’re blessed to have them working here at United. We never have to look very far to find employees here that are willing to do that.”