IBEW Members Respond to Hurricane Sandy

IBEW ^ | November 1, 2012 | IBEW

[mdittmar]

Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc across the Eastern Seaboard, from North Carolina to New England, knocking down power lines, and flooding coastal communities. Hardest hit were New York and New Jersey, leaving more than a million residents without power and many without homes.

 

IBEW members from throughout the country are pitching in to restore power and fix damaged infrastructure.

“Devastating,” Wall, N.J., Local 1289 Business Manager Edward Stroup, III, says about Sandy.

Stroup represents workers at Jersey Central Power and Light – a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. – which provides power to more than 1 million central New Jersey residents. He says:

There are houses that have been totaled, houses that are almost beyond repair, massive infrastructure problems – it’s a huge mess.

His linemen are working around the clock to help get tens of thousands of customers’ power back on. The company says the priority is responding to hazardous situations and fixing major infrastructure damage, like substation and transmission facilities.

Says Stroup:

There are lines with multiple problems, which have to be fixed. It seems like there are trees down on every block and if it didn’t hit a house, it took out a power line.

Safety is both the IBEW’s and company’s top goal, he says, reporting no injuries despite the dangerous nature of the work.

Hardest hit has been the Jersey Shore, with the oceanfront communities of Atlantic City and Asbury Park overrun by flooding that tore up boardwalks and homes.

Says Atlantic City Local 210 Business Manager Charles Hill:

Massive tidal surges covered the roads in over three feet of sand. They’ve got snow plows working to clear the roads.

Hill says they’ve got everyone working to clean-up the damage, with help from IBEW linemen from across the country and inside wiremen from Folsom Local 351.

The Washington, D.C. metro-area, hit bad by last summer’s derecho storms, was largely spared the widespread damage seen in the Northeast, says Washington, D.C. Local 1900 Business Manager Jim Griffin, who represents workers at Pepco.

In fact, the local is sending a team of more than 20 workers, who specialize in underground line work, to New York City, which was hit by floods and blackouts that shut down the subway system and darkened lower Manhattan.  

Says Griffin:

Much of ConEd’s system is underground, so they need all the help they can get. It will be a long process just to pump all the water out.

IBEW linemen from areas outside the storm region are also working to clean up the damage.

Paducah, Ky., Local 816 member Dustin Croley is in Massachusetts to help restore power.

Waiting out the worst of the storm on Cape Cod, he told hometown WPSD-TV:

It didn’t rain a lot but the wind got really bad, broke a lot of trees, and the power went out several times.

[PubliusMM]

I’m amazed at the arrogance of the IBEW...to assume that those non-union folks would come in to the area, and decide to stay beyond the storm recovery effort.
The only reason for these out-of-towners to be in the area is to help the residents get back to some semblance of normalcy. I can’t imagine that any of them would arrive, look around, and say, “Yep, this looks like a place I could call home.”
The IBEW is as much to blame for the stalled recovery efforts as is FEMA (ill prepared, despite their crowing self-promotion), and 0bama (campaigning while the east coast shivers and starves).

Truly, this is the best of the libtards...

[Henry Hnyellar]

Gangsters. Look how they have to wear their colors all the time with the Local #99 crap. It’s their entire identity. How pathetic.

[JimC214]

Apparently Con Ed and The Pols, Bloomie and Cuomo are drinking some powerful mind altering crap. Just awhile ago, “Scabulis” was praising Bloomie for his leadership in this crisis. Just one clueless pol ass kissing another pol. She also told Bloomie that he was giving good medical advice by telling the “people” not to drink the storm water. No mention of the bodies being found or of the looting that has been going on in the hard hit areas. Then the Mayor really got upset when a “reporter” instead of kissing his honors rump, had the nerve to ask a question about what happened to change his mind about the Marathon. And they also announced that if any local leader called to ask for help and didn’t get an answer in 15 mins, well they could just call the big O directly. They just forgot to say where the big O was campaigning at this time. Just another day in fantasy land.

[JimRed]

We just got power back last evening at about 6:45; a blessing, considering that we were told it could take until Wednesday. The IBEW HQ is about three munutes from my house. It’s the one with “no foreign cars to be parked on this property” sign. I guess the big boss hides his Mercedes around back...

[Spktyr]

Then perhaps the people of New Jersey should do something about them.