Two at a Time

A photo tribute to the Duke Energy crews who worked tirelessly to restore our neighborhood in the aftermath of hurricane Irma.

​The power grid for our neighborhood is old, and all above ground.  It snakes between adjoining over-sized and hard-to-access back yards that are heavily wooded, with overgrown canopies, now in various states of disarray amongst tangled lines, leaning power poles and burned-out transformers. ​

Our entire little neighborhood in the suburbs north of Orlando suffered an ongoing power outage in the aftermath of hurricane Irma.  Duke Energy responded with what appeared to be thousands of trucks and crews from all over the southeast, yet those 10 days without power seemed like forever as frustration grew.

​We were certain Duke had forgotten us in our little island of portable generators and miserable heat while they worked to rebuild the rest of the Orlando-area power grid.

Then, what seemed like a hoard of large white friendly locusts, the Duke crews descended between our street and the next one over with more than a dozen bucket trucks.

While I watched them work, the challenge these crews faced snapped into focus.

These crews had to restore power to us and our 100 or so neighbors, two houses at a time.

Those pesky Christmas light strings. ​

The feeder line snakes its way down the opposing backyard fence lines.  The line daisy-chains between power poles placed strategically in the backyard corners, supporting transformers each feeding 2 homes.  The weight of fallen debris pulled the feeder lines, in turn pulling the power poles, in turn shorting many of the transformers.

I was reminded of that hopeless feeling on Christmas Eve when one light fails and the tree goes dark.
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Their mission was to clear the debris, restore or replace the damaged poles, repair and re-string the line, replace the shorted transformers and finally re-connect the homes, 2 at a time.

​In our case, they worked all day, having arrived from NC the night before, and into the evening.  

After spending some time with them and watching the intensity of their work, the 10 day delay seemed amazingly brief, considering the same scenario held true for dozens of neighborhoods in our area.

Thanks to the men and women of Duke Energy who worked long hours away from home to restore our power.