One hundred twenty-three linemen from 23 of Missouri’s electric cooperatives have arrived in Florida and are working to restore power to those affected by Hurricane Michael, according to officials with the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives.
Linemen from Three Rivers Electric in Linn, Co-Mo Electric Cooperative in Tipton and Boone Electric Cooperative in Columbia are part of the crew that left Wednesday for Florida.
The crews had to cut their way into the final approaches to Talquin Electric Cooperative, one of the Florida electric cooperatives near the center of the storm.
Just short of their goal after driving from a staging area in Athens, Georgia, the cooperative linemen use chainsaws and cut for nearly three hours before the road could be cleared enough to reach Talquin Electric headquarters in Quincy, Florida, according to a news release.
The crews were assigned “bird dogs,” employees of the local cooperative who will be their guides as they work in the storm-damaged area. As the storm passed through the cooperative’s service area near Tallahassee, nearly all of the cooperative’s 55,000 members were without power. Talquin suffered severe damage to its distribution and transmission lines, complicating restoration efforts.
Talquin Electric reported on its Facebook page, at the height of the outages, 98 percent of Talquin members were without power. Approximately 1,000 poles were broken and numerous wires downed throughout the cooperative’s service territory.