Tim Adkins was cold and tired, but he still had a lot of work to do.
As part of a 19-member crew from 4-County Electric Power Association deployed to Tippah County after Winter Storm Fern, Adkins and his colleagues trudged through the ice and downed trees in below-freezing conditions, trying to get damaged power lines back up and running.
Then a van pulled up, the back window rolled down and a girl named Shelby Hamblin handed Adkins a drawing she made of a utility worker repairing a power line. It read, “Thank you for helping my community.”
“It was a very sweet gesture, and it kind of put things into perspective (because) we’re gone from home,” Adkins told The Dispatch. “We’re not around our families. We’re missing our families. We’re missing milestones with our families. I had to miss my kid’s first ball game, things like that. But it puts into perspective what we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish. And helping these families get back on a normal routine.”
4-County, along with other Golden Triangle utility companies, sent crews over the past few weeks to help with recovery efforts in northern areas of the state like New Albany, Tippah and Prentiss counties that dealt with the brunt of Winter Storm Fern. The crews found widespread debris, frozen roads and several snapped poles that have prolonged restoration efforts.
The crew that included Adkins worked in Tippah County Jan. 29-Feb. 4 before another crew relieved them.
While the work has been time-consuming and difficult because of iced-over roads, broken tree limbs and maneuvering through snow, Dedrick Stevenson, a crew leader for 4-County who was also sent to Tippah County, said the crews kept pushing because they would want the same done for their families had they lost power.
“They have been patiently waiting, and there’s nothing they can do,” Stevenson said. “And I know everybody that’s been up there from the time we went, to the ones coming back (this week) and (from) the other companies that are there, we know that they’re working hard. But it’s just a process. It’s just like building a road, you can’t lay all of it in one day. And that’s the same way with a power line.”
On Monday, Tippah Electric Power Association only had about 1,500 outages remaining across its coverage area, which Adkins expects would take seven to 10 more days to restore. Crews will continue to rotate through until the job is done, with Adkins set to return this morning.
“We’re going on about three weeks now with people without power up there, and it’s just a very large task,” Adkins said. “We have people from all over the country coming in these areas that were affected to help. … People look for a little hope. And when that power comes on after they’ve been out for a little while, it gives them a little bit to look forward to that things are going to be alright. It’s a little bump in the road, and they’ll get over it. But this kind of work doesn’t get done by individuals. It gets done by teams. And I’m proud to have been part of that team.”
New Albany response
On Jan. 25, New Albany Light Gas and Water reported it had more than 10,000 outages across its system, the utility company said in a Facebook post.
The next day, crews from Columbus Light and Water and Starkville Utilities made the trek up to the city to help with restoration efforts.
Demon Jackson, CLW line foreman, said his eight-person crew was there for about 10 days, dealing with conditions unlike anything he’d seen before as a lineman.
“I’ve worked ice storms before, but this one was colder,” Jackson wrote in an email to The Dispatch. “We dealt with the ice as if it was still happening. You would hit the line with an inch of ice, and the ice didn’t want to break off. So it was a colder and a rougher experience due to the ice.”
Shasta Plunkett, a line foreman with Starkville Utilities, said he, along with five other volunteers, spent two weeks in Blue Mountain, about 15 minutes north of New Albany, repairing and replacing 19 broken electrical poles and fixing power lines to restore power to the town’s roughly 2,000 residents.
While there, Plunkett said the community provided the crew with meals every day they were there and locals were looking for any way to help the group’s efforts, even though they were going through difficult circumstances.
“Everyone was coming outside,” Plunkett said. “They didn’t have any electricity, but they were all willing to help us to get whatever we needed to do, to either cut trees or (get) food or move vehicles or anything like that. They were willing to do that. … So it was amazing how the community came together up there and helped out any way possible.”
You can help your community
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 40 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
