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TVA Crews Help Neighbor Utility Amid Helene, Milton Damage

The day after Hurricane Helene, TVA lineworker apprentice Jared Lamb headed to North Carolina with his crew to help get the lights back on for Duke Energy customers.

In the outskirts of Asheville, flood debris had knocked over a utility pole near the French Broad River. The closest access for TVA’s equipment was about 500 yards away, along a narrow country road.

About 8 p.m. – after getting power restored – Lamb’s crew called it a night. They left a large tool truck parked at the site.

The next morning, Lamb went to get some equipment from the truck to finish up the job.

Tucked into the handle of the driver’s side door was an envelope.

“I was a little confused at first,” Lamb said. “I didn’t know what it was.”

Lamb opened the envelope, and what he found warmed his heart.

It was a card – a child’s artwork in blue paint and black marker.

With a smiley face.

And a note: “Thank you line men for fixing our power.”

‘A Good Neighbor’

As residents and businesses reeled from the devastating flooding in and around western North Carolina, many things were in short supply. Drinking water. Electricity. Phone service.

But there was an abundance of gratitude.

TVA line crews and pilots said they were showered with appreciation for showing up to help.

“It made us all feel like heroes,” Lamb said. “People were waving at us as we drove by. To get that note kind of sealed the deal.”

Lamb’s crew brought the card back home to west Tennessee as a souvenir of their eight-day mission in the Carolinas and TVA’s partnership with Duke.

Under a mutual aid agreement in effect since 2015, the two utilities back each other up when there’s a need for extra boots on the ground amid major storms.

The pact has been invoked three times: Hurricane Florence in 2018, and twice this fall with the one-two punch of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Duke’s resources were spread thin and its immediate neighbor utilities – also in the path of the storms – didn’t have personnel or equipment to spare.

So Duke called TVA.

“TVA is a good neighbor for us, even though it might be a couple of houses down,” said Kenny Adams, Duke’s director of construction management for power grid operations-transmission in Florida.

As soon as Helene passed, TVA sent about 50 lineworkers, including Lamb’s crew, to Maiden, North Carolina.

They caravaned from Tiptonville – in the northwestern corner of Tennessee, near the Missouri bootheel – and hauled along with them the heavy equipment and gear needed to repair or rebuild transmission infrastructure.

Just two weeks later, when Milton threatened Florida, TVA dispatched about 100 lineworkers with equipment to stand by in Ocala.

David Beets, the foreman for Lamb’s crew, said his team was ready even before Helene hit.

“We were home watching it on the news just like everybody else and seeing how big it was going to be,” Beets said. “We were kind of anticipating a phone call. We told our guys, ‘Have your phones on and have your laundry done.’

“Everybody was eager to go assist Duke. We've been through many storms ourselves, tornadoes or ice storms. Just seeing the help roll in is very appreciated."

Helicopter Patrols

TVA also sent long-range helicopters for both storm responses, with TVA pilots performing crucial damage assessments.

Pilot Ryan Madigan traveled to Florida with a 500-gallon mobile fuel trailer so he could inspect Duke’s lines even if airports lacked power to pump fuel.

Duke – which provides electricity to 8.4 million customers in the Carolinas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky – has been through numerous hurricanes in Florida.

But the severity of Helene in western North Carolina was something new. Duke’s helicopters were staged in the Florida panhandle and the weather kept them grounded for several days after the storm.

“I got a call at 11 a.m. on Sunday after the storm, asking how fast I could be there,” said helicopter pilot Will Morris, program manager for TVA flight operations.

He packed a week’s clothes and took off from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in a Bell 407 helicopter equipped with instruments that allow it to fly through clouds in low visibility.

Morris landed in Charlotte and spent four days flying routes over Duke’s territory.

“They paired me up with some of their linemen and they gave us a list of lines we needed to go start patrolling,” Morris said.

The flight crew called in what they found, ensuring teams on the ground could get to work.

“There was one substation completely gone, trees down over lines, five or six structures in a row that were completely gone and knocked over,” Morris said. “It was a lot, and a widespread area. My last day there, I flew to Augusta, Georgia, which is 160 miles away.”

‘General Hospitality’

On the ground, TVA lineworker foreman Adam Ruddle’s crew was also covering a lot of territory – even just to get one substation in Forest City, North Carolina, back online.

“We started out in a swamp, where we had to clear brush to get to a structure that was broken,” Ruddle said. “We ended up about 30 spans down the line on a putting green at a golf course.”

In between, the crew reconnected wiring and replaced broken poles, crossarms and hardware.

Homeowners were understanding as TVA moved equipment onto their property to reach damaged lines, Ruddle said.

“You couldn’t find nicer people – they were gracious, they were thankful, they were asking us if we needed anything,” he said.

One job Ruddle’s crew handled near Gaffney, South Carolina, proved especially hard to reach: On a hill between two valleys, a tree had fallen on conductor wire and broken a two-pole structure.

“It took us a couple hours to find the best access,” Ruddle said.

A swampy area and a creek blocked the way.

Eventually, Ruddle asked a nearby property owner to let the TVA crew through his fence to stage in his field.

“I told him how long it would take and what equipment would be involved,” Ruddle said. “I went to get the crew, and when I came back, he had taken his tractor and pulled his fence down so we could have easier access into his field.

“And this guy – they had power at their house. They weren’t waiting on us to get their power back on. It was just general hospitality.”

The man’s wife then approached the crew.

“She came out said, ‘We're fixing to go to the store. Do you guys need anything?’ I said, ‘No, ma’am, we’re well taken care of.’ But they just wanted to help any way they could.”

‘We Take it Personally’

The desire to help went both ways.

Driving through downtown Asheville, North Carolina, to restore power at two substations serving the retail district, lineworker foreman J.R. Ries was overwhelmed by what he saw.

“You could see the water line on the top of the Wendy's restaurant,” he said. “There were neighbors still helping each other cut trees off driveways, still trying to get access to their house.

“You feel kind of helpless in those situations, like there's so much more that that you could offer. But we’re also doing our job. That was one of the things that got me with the whole situation – just the feeling of wanting to do more.

“Sometimes in our line of work, regardless of where it's at or who it is, we take it personally,” Ries said. “That's just the nature of what we do.”

Transmission field lines supervisor Cody Young echoed that.

“Our folks have always responded in the time of crisis," Young said. “When they're needed most, they're always there, and they always want to help. They’d give you the shirt off their backs. Whenever the call comes, they’ll go.”

Personnel and Equipment

Transmission leaders at TVA and Duke said that, while it always comes down to people, equipment and expertise also make the mutual aid pact work.

“We’re one of the very few transmission utilities that have our own in-house construction,” transmission field lines supervisor Joe Bell said. That means when TVA crews mobilize, they’re fully equipped to deal with anything they might encounter.

Duke’s Adams said that given the terrain in Florida, it’s crucial that TVA can bring bucket trucks and other equipment mounted on bulldozer-style tracks.

“We have a lot of swamp. We have a lot of really rough access areas,” he said. “TVA is familiar with our soil conditions – or you might say, sand conditions.”

Thus far, the mutual aid agreement has only been called upon by Duke.

Daniel Tate, TVA senior manager for transmission lines, said that’s to be expected.

“Duke being in a hurricane area puts them in position to have a lot of damage,” he said. “For us it’s typically tornadoes, and we have a large enough workforce to handle what damage we get."

Adams jokingly calls Tate “my one phone-a-friend.”

As Milton approached Florida, it was a Category 5 storm tracking over major population centers and threatening generation and transmission assets, as well as Duke’s ties with neighboring utilities. Adams needed to get 1,000 pairs of boots on the ground – nearly twice what Duke had marshalled for other huge storms.

He reached out to Tate, who said personnel and equipment would be on their way.

“You can imagine the relief I have knowing the TVA guys are heading south,” Adams said.

And Duke, he added, is standing by ready to return the favor.

“Hopefully you guys will never need help, but if you do, we can roll our trucks north as easily as you roll south,” Adams said.