Local hydro crew home from Florida mission

Every year, thousands Canadians make the long trek down to Florida to spend a week or two, or even the whole winter, relaxing and soaking up the sun.
But when Brent McQuaker, Brian Curtis, and Bob McTavish went there late last month, it was anything but relaxing.
The district trio are linemen with Hydro One and late in September, the call went out from head office for volunteers to head down to the Sunshine State to help out with the enormous task of repairing the power lines that had been brought down by two hurricanes over a period of less than three weeks.
The call was a little unusual, said McQuaker, because of the great distance involved. The local crew is twice as far away as a crew from Toronto would have been, but it was necessary.
“They’d already had crews from southern Ontario down there and I don’t think they were capable [of going back] after working two weeks of 16-hour days,” he noted.
So McQuaker, Curtis, and McTavish took a half-ton and a line truck, joined 13 others from Kenora, Dryden, Thunder Bay, and Rainy River, and headed south.
They were accompanied by a total of 270 Hydro One workers—all volunteers.
McQuaker said the trip took three days—partly due to visa problems at the U.S. border. A special green card is required to work in the U.S., but the crew didn’t have theirs with them.
Eventually, that was taken care of and they were off to Florida. And as it turned out, they wound up in the same location as the previous Hydro One crew.
“They (the other crew) had only been home about three days when Hurricane Jeanne hit, so we wound up going back to rebuild in the same area,” noted Curtis.
The Hydro One contingent was largest one there. With 270 men and 200 trucks, they were not hard to spot, since each truck had a maple leaf painted on it to remind local residents how far they had come.
And the locals were grateful.
“They were really good to us,” said McQuaker. “They recognized our trucks from the first two weeks and they were really glad to see us [again].
“It was quite a compliment to our company and our guys,” he added.
In fact, they were so glad to see them, it seems at least one Hydro One fan club was formed.
“We were driving through northern Georgia when a lady in a van honked at us and flashed a sign in the back saying, ‘We love you, Hydro One,’” McQuaker recalled.
Once in Florida, however, it was all business. McTavish said the amount of damage was truly significant since two hurricanes took almost identical paths only two weeks apart.
The town of Stewart on the Atlantic coast was particularly hard-hit.
“Stewart was kind of ‘Ground Zero,’” said McTavish. “The hurricanes cut a swath about 80 miles wide through there.”
The hydro crews weren’t the only out-of-towners to visit the area. While they were there, U.S. President George W. Bush and his entourage came to view the damage, but the crews were too busy to do any people watching.
McQuaker said the work was similar to what they were used to here—but the conditions certainly were not. “The heat was more than we were used to and it was almost like working in a jungle in places,” he remarked.
“Having to cut down palm trees to get to downed lines was unusual. I’ve never done that before,” Curtis added.
The crew was stationed mostly in Port St. Lucie, where they co-ordinated with crews from other jurisdictions. A supervisor from Florida Power served as a sort of roving troubleshooter, who made sure the men had what they needed.
Although the hours were long, the men were treated well, with all their expenses covered. While there, they drew the same wages they would if they were back home.
“I thought we should have been paid in American dollars, though,” McTavish quipped.
Their accommodations were somewhat unusual, however. They wound up spending two nights at Walt Disney World and another two in Ft. Lauderdale.
The trip had its lighter moments, as well as a touch of tragedy. The humorous part was when they got lost on the way down. The tragic moment was when a lineman from Georgia was electrocuted working on a line that was supposed to be dead.
Fortunately, his crew (as are all Hydro One crews) was trained in CPR and they managed to get his heart going again. McQuaker said the last they heard, the man had been released from hospital, suffering no lingering effects apart from severe burns.
McTavish said the accident was something that happens with some frequency down there—and is becoming more common up here. It was the result of someone incorrectly hooking up a generator after the power went out.
“It’s called generator back feed,” he explained. “When people fire up a generator without turning the panel off or just plugging it into an outlet, it sends current out through the grid.
“When that happens, it comes out the top end of the transformer,” McQuaker added, meaning the current goes out at 120 volts, but then is converted back to 7,200 volts when it comes off the transformer.
That’s more than enough to kill a hydro worker if he touches a line that he thinks is dead.
By Oct. 6, power had been restored—at least temporarily—to millions of Florida residents and it was time to come home. However, the damage done by the hurricanes didn’t stop with the power lines.
Curtis said he noted that virtually every orange tree had been stripped of its fruit, which lay rotting on the ground. Presumably, we can expect higher prices for citrus fruit this winter.
Would they do it again?
“Sure. I’d go again, but I don’t know if I’d go tomorrow, though,” said McTavish, noting all three of them also had responded to the great ice storm in eastern Ontario and Quebec back in 1998.
“But they couldn’t force me to eat grits,” he laughed.