In recent months, short videos posted to social media sites shared the surge of excitement felt by Puerto Ricans as power was restored to their homes, schools and communities for the first time since September.
In schools, teachers erupted in cheers and students jumped up and down when the lights came on. In the streets, local residents gathered around electric power poles to applaud as linemen completed work on lines that had previously lain broken after the passage of Hurricane Maria.
Rick Berg and Terry Garrett witnessed the joy firsthand as two of OG&E’s 125 employees who assisted in the repair and restoration of a portion of the power grid in Puerto Rico. A Category 4 storm hit the island, which was already recovering from Hurricane Irma’s impact weeks before, in late September. Regarded as the worst natural disaster on record for the area, Hurricane Maria caused an estimated $95 billion in damage, created a large-scale power outage and killed dozens of people.
In January, OG&E’s first crew of linemen arrived at a northern coastal municipality where buildings were still in tatters and tangles of electric lines and utility poles laid dormant. When crews drove their bright orange trucks in, Berg spotted a homemade sign that simply read, “123.” The residents had been without power for 123 days, he said.
“There were horns honking and people out in the streets, celebrating. I even heard a few firecrackers going off, which scares linemen. They wonder if it’s a blown fuse,” Berg said. “They were very excited, just beating pots and pans. They were also very appreciative that we came from Oklahoma over to their island.”
While OG&E crews have performed power restoration work in communities ravaged by storms in the past, the Puerto Rico mission was unlike the others, they said. That’s largely because of the people. Families opened their homes to the linemen so they had somewhere to sleep; women delivered food dishes to be enjoyed during breaks; children passed out crayon drawings depicting the OG&E trucks; local dignitaries penned proclamations and presented plaques at town celebrations.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Garrett said. “There are things you see and experience through storms. People are always appreciative. This was completely different. It was truly amazing. You can just look at the comments on [OG&E’s] Facebook . There are thousands of comments, and they are mostly from Puerto Rico.”
To Arecibo
In late October, the leader of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) sent a letter to utility industry trade groups requesting assistance from U.S. mainland utilities. It was the first time PREPA had requested help from the utilities. In the days after Hurricane Maria, the company turned to a small Montana-based contractor, Whitefish Energy Holdings, for grid restoration. The no-bid contract was later canceled amid criticism from federal leaders.Washington, D.C.-based Edison Electric Institute, an association representing private, investor-owned utilities including OG&E, was one of the trade groups to respond, pledging its members’ services.
“Out of all the utility companies in the United States, 19 stepped up,” Berg said. “Our company was one of them. To me, that is pretty neat. We are not a big company. We are in Oklahoma with 2,400 employees, but some of these other utilities have 24,000 employees.”
After a month of planning, 50 OG&E trucks were loaded onto a barge at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and routed to Puerto Rico. An OG&E team headed to the island. There, they prepared to unload the vehicles and equipment, coordinate crew lodging and secure staging areas. Back in Oklahoma City, volunteer linemen and support staff prepared to mobilize.
“We were told to take a 50-man team,” Berg said. “We took 62 total with linemen and support. There were another 50 ready to go. Had we done the third wave, there was already another 50 ready to go. It turned into an honor to go and represent our company.”
On Jan. 20, the first OG&E linemen crew arrived for a 20-day mission. Assigned to the Arecibo region of Puerto Rico, OG&E crews worked alongside Dallas-based Oncor and Houston-based CenterPoint Energy. On Feb. 8, the second wave of 50 linemen traveled to Puerto Rico, returning to Oklahoma in early March. Last week, only one OG&E employee remained on the island, where electricity had been restored to nearly 90 percent of customers, said Gayle Berry, OG&E spokeswoman.
Committed
Efforts to restore power to the people of the Arecibo region were no different from the work linemen do in Oklahoma, both Berg and Garrett said.The work was challenging, mostly because of the unfamiliar terrain, especially for the second crew of Oklahoma linemen assigned to a mountainous area. OG&E trucks had to navigate narrow roads. Upon reaching their destination, linemen trudged through thick jungle vegetation to find downed power transmission lines and begin their work. Each lineman was given a machete.
There was an advantage to working in the mountains, Garrett said. Each mountain community was home to a school.
“They take a lot of pride in their schools,” Garrett said. “The schools were open half-days. When we would get those schools on, it was amazing. Now, some of these buildings were 70 to 80 years old. When you turned the lights on, maybe of the eight lights in a classroom, one would work. When that one light would come on, those kids were tickled to death.”
Both Garrett and Berg applauded their crews for their hard work. Between the two of them, they brought 75 years of storm experience into the Puerto Rico mission.
“When our teams came home, we knew right here in our hearts that we had done good,” Berg said as he tapped his heart. “We go out on storms sometimes where you get back and you think that wasn’t a big deal — either it wasn’t much of a storm or there wasn’t a lot they would let you do. When you came back from Puerto Rico, you felt good. … We now have friends over there, and they now have friends over here.”
Print headline: Team orange; Two OG&E employees served as OG&E storm leads, rebuilding Puerto Rico’s hurricane-damaged power grid.
This article appears in Alcoholmanac 2018.