Missouri electric linemen to the rescue

Missouri linemen heading to Georgia and Florida for Hurricane Irma help. Missouri’s electric cooperatives are responding to a call for help from electric cooperatives in the path of Hurricane Irma with 146 linemen from 26 systems. The Missouri crews plan to leave on Tuesday, Sept. 12. They will be split between Flint Energies, Reynolds, Georgia, GreyStone Power, Douglasville, Georgia and SECO Energy, Sumterville, FL.

When the crews are released from Georgia, they are expected to head to Florida. Earlier the Missouri crews were committed to two cooperatives in South Carolina, Berkeley and Palmetto electric cooperatives. However, Irma’s westward shift focused the pre-storm preparation to Georgia and Florida, where millions of people are without electricity. Missouri took part in daily conference calls among electric cooperatives that were expected to need help and those that should be out of harm’s way. Offers of assistance came from electric cooperatives as far away as New Hampshire, Vermont and South Dakota.

Most of the Missouri electric cooperatives will send a digger-derrick truck and a bucket truck to be prepared for anything they may find. A fuel tanker truck from Central Electric Power Cooperative, Jefferson City, will accompany the group headed to Florida to avoid potential shortages enroute. Those electric co-ops sending crews include: Barton County Electric Cooperative, Lamar; Black River Electric Cooperative, Fredericktown; Boone Electric Cooperative, Columbia; Callaway Electric Cooperative, Fulton;  Citizens Electric Cooperative, Perryville; Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, Tipton; Consolidated Electric Cooperative, Mexico; Crawford Electric Cooperative, Bourbon; Cuivre River Electric Cooperative, Troy; Gascosage Electric Cooperative, Dixon; Grundy Electric Cooperative, Trenton; Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative, West Plains; Intercounty Electric Cooperative, Licking; Laclede Electric Cooperative, Lebanon; Macon Electric Cooperative, Macon; North Central Missouri Electric Cooperative, Milan Osage Valley Electric Cooperative, Butler; Platte-Clay Electric Cooperative, Kearney; Ralls County Electric Cooperative, New London; Sac-Osage Electric Cooperative, El Dorado Springs; SEMO Electric Cooperative, Sikeston; Southwest Electric Cooperative, Bolivar; Tri-County Electric Cooperative, Lancaster; United Electric Cooperative, Maryville; Webster Electric Cooperative, Marshfield; West Central Electric Cooperative, Higginsville.

Missouri’s electric cooperatives are no strangers to helping out in the hurricane zones. Show-Me State linemen worked their first hurricane in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan hit the Gulf Coast. In the years that followed, Missouri crews, out of harm’s way, have become a common sight wherever the hurricane zone happened to be. Electric co-ops in Louisiana and Mississippi have returned the favor, helping Missouri electric cooperatives restore power after the ice storms of 2007 and 2009. Relief crews are coordinated by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, the statewide service organization for the state’s electric cooperatives. Its emergency assistance program began in 1948.