Driving down a heavily-wooded, edge-of-the-suburbs road this evening, I saw six cherrypicker trucks in a little lane. Transformers were on the ground, next to light poles that had been sheared off by the force of the wind.
I pulled my car up next to them and got out. The men, who were exhausted by the horrendous heat and were just finishing a very long shift, stiffened when they saw me. They saw a middle-aged lady dressed to the nines, and from their faces it was clear that they assumed they were going to hear a complaint or three.
Instead I thanked them profusely for their work. They were very pleased and surprised by my thanks, but they also pointed out that they were from Jacksonville, Florida, and the effort was organized by Pepco. I told them Pepco was okay in my book, even though my neighborhood was without power for quite awhile.
It was an FPL crew that got the wires back up in my neighborhood and our power back on last night. Still not happy with Pepco though - we are seeing some of the fruits of decades of neglect and a very complacent corporate culture. There’s plenty of other blame to go around - decisions made decades ago on above-ground versus underground lines, planting then-little trees directly below the power lines that surely were going to grow into line-consuming big trees over time, etc., etc. It all came together in a perfect storm, crazily caused by a freak weather event that couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes long at peak intensity.