Utilities helping other utilities goes back further than that. Some of my earliest childhood memories go back to Hurricane Carol in 1954 in southern New England. We had no warning, my Dad was at work, the fall school term had not started yet and my Mom gathered us all to the front of the house or cellar away from the tall trees. She was obviously distraught because my Dad did not come home for hours because he couldn't get through on the roads. We were without power for seven days and saw the power and utility companies from Virginia and mid-Atlantic states working on the lines and eventually power came back on.
How in the heck did you go from hurricanes to sand storms????
In Charlotte, in late September of 1989 in the aftermath of Hugo (about 200 miles inland from landfall), many neighborhoods had no power for two weeks or more. It was miserable, to say the least, even if you were so fortunate as to have sustained no falling tree damage. But late September in NC without a/c is one thing; late August in Louisiana and Mississippi is something else.
Utilities helping other utilities goes back further than that. Some of my earliest childhood memories go back to Hurricane Carol in 1954 in southern New England. We had no warning, my Dad was at work, the fall school term had not started yet and my Mom gathered us all to the front of the house or cellar away from the tall trees. She was obviously distraught because my Dad did not come home for hours because he couldn't get through on the roads. We were without power for seven days and saw the power and utility companies from Virginia and mid-Atlantic states working on the lines and eventually power came back on.
I was one years old during that storm in CT. My father told the story about how he had not heard about the storm and was traveling with me and couldnt understand how the weather was so rough... took him hours to make it home.