Out-of-State Workers Continue to Help with Recovery

John Hon celebrated his 29th wedding anniversary this weekend with an all-expenses paid trip to Baltimore.

But the journeyman electrical lineman from Kentucky was without his wife, and hasn’t had a chance to take in any of the tourist attractions like the Inner Harbor or Fort McHenry.

Instead, Hon has been hard at work helping to restore power to the hundreds of thousands of Maryland residents who have been without electricity since Hurricane Irene came through Saturday.

“I’ve been doing this for 22 years, so my wife is used to this and she is really understanding,” said Hon, a father of eight, who works for Serco Inc. “We have a lot of work to do here and it’s rewarding to be able to help.”

Hon is one of more than 1,000 out-of-state workers brought in by BGE as part of the utility company’s electric restoration effort. As of 9 a.m. Monday, BGE had restored power to 494,033 customers, with an additional 237,962 still without electricity.

BGE officials expressed hope that the majority of the power would be restored by late Friday, while some isolated areas may not be back online until Saturday.

In the meantime, the out-of-state linemen and support staff—which includes workers from Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia—will continue to get bused in daily from hotels to one of four staging areas, including one at Lockheed Martin in Middle River. There, they will be fed breakfast before learning their assignment for the day.

Many of these workers arrived early last week in preparation for the storm. They are being paired up with BGE crewmembers in order to learn its protocol as well as the geography of the state.

Dave Williams is another journeyman lineman from Serco. He said he has worked through many tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters over the last 25 years and considers Irene to be one of his most challenging jobs.

“Tornadoes are usually more concentrated with their destruction, but Irene was just so widespread,” Williams said. “Fixing downed lines is just one of the challenges. We’re also on the front line dealing with people who are frustrated over losing their power.

“But, for the most part, people in Maryland have been nothing but courteous. When they see us pull up, they know that their power will be back on soon.”

Brian McBroom, a foreman with Davis H. Elliott in Tennessee, was on vacation with his wife and kids in Florida when he was called in to work. He cut his vacation short, dropped the family off and drove 10 hours to reach Maryland by Saturday.

“The hardest part is learning the protocols of the local utility company,” McBroom said. “But, it’s all pretty much the same when you get out on the site. The key is working together.”

Getting all of the out-of-state workers, along with the nearly 3,000 BGE workers, to be on the same page is no easy task, said Gil Nichols, logistics staging area director for BGE.

Nichols added that the utility conducts drills throughout the year in preparation for various natural disasters, but it’s impossible to know exactly what impact a natural disaster will have until it actually arrives.

“I was here during Tropical Storm Isabel [in 2003], and while flooding was a lot worse then, the widespread destruction was worse this time,” Nichols said. “This has to rank as one of the top three disasters in Maryland ever in my opinion.”

BGE instructor Frank Peusch echoed Nichols' sentiment. He said he has never seen such widespread destruction in his 32 years with the utility.

“We knew during Isabel that we would mainly have to concentrate on waterfront communities,” Peusch said. “But here, we have damage in Harford County, Baltimore County, Annapolis, Severna Park. … It is just everywhere.”