Originally Posted by
Pootnaigle
Last one I worked was Rita. They finally saw the light and assigned 1 serviceman to all the most important subs. He had upwards of a 100 folks working directly for him.Tree trimmers, contractors, etc. I did purdy much as you suggested Top but I also had to get them the necessary materials to work with.Worked really well. When we restored all the feeders out of one sub we got another. I tried to keep all the contractors from each group working on the same section of the feeders I also kept the tree guys ahead of the linemen. so that when the linemen finally arrived it didnt require any tree work.The stuff on the street went damn quick but the alley stuff took a spell.By the time it was over I knew most of em by name and knew their stregnths and weaknesses.I was asked by management to keep an updated map of what was ready to go and what percentage of the work liked completion. This for damn sure wasnt my first rodeo but it went extremely smooth compared to the rest.Several of those crews brought alley machines with em and if they couldnt get em through the gate we lifted em over the entire house with a crane. Lottsa pictures taken of brand new alley rigs hanging from slings on the end of a 50 ton crane and guys saying " If my boss sees this shit I am soooooooooooo fired, But its cool as hell" Biggest problem was communication, only cell phones were common to both me and the workers, their radios worked fine for communicating between crews,
I was given complete control of the feeders out of my subs, Issued my own clearances and added or removed grounds at will. Left all switches in the same mode as I found them.Once the sub became energized I closed fuses at will until every customer that could accept power had power.I merely gave the company guys a rundown on what was hot and what wasnt at the end of each day.
The single biggest problem we faced was our own damn customers who had evacuated and been told not to return home until things were better under control. Interstate hiway runs right thru here and every exit was barricaded by state police or national gaurd. They would not let the public exit. But most of em found a way to travel the backroads and get home anyway. Having no power and it being hotter than hell they damn near all got in their a/c cars and rode around just rubbernecking. dont sound bad but it was. Crews had to divert men to flag traffic, streets were blocked causing traffic jams, and crews trying to follow a lead person to their worksite were cut off by these dumbasses. and got lost.
All in all it was probably the most smoothly run storm I had ever been on and several contractors said the same thing.
And the reason behind this whole scenerio was that Management was totally overwhelmed at the amount of damage and had no idea how to schedule any of it. The part they did play was to assign crews to folks like me until I released em. If I needed more I told em ,when I needed less I would cut a contractor loose and give em back to management to be reassigned.