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Thread: Irene

  1. #21
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    May 2004
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    Good grief. That's not good for Jersey. And Lee missed us! We had a little shower last night and that was it. It was on the tail end of it. Some of the panhandle and some of north FL did get it.


    Quote Originally Posted by Lineman North Florida View Post
    LA I have seen some FPL crews, some JEA crews, Gulf Power crews and of course our bunch from Fla, but none from Live Oak. I ran into 1 of the Smith boys the other day and I thought he told me that they had headed into Connecticut, I made it to the Pennsylvania line today so I eased on across so I could say I had been there, it sure is some pretty farmland up in there, anyhow I gotta get to bed 4:30 is gonna come early.
    My mom went up that far several years back and she said the same thing about PA.

    I'm surprised you haven't ran into Jaxtaz.

  2. #22

    Cool

    I know I'm just an old fart who has climbed more than a few poles And restored a bunch of customers back to service. I still believe we did it just as efficient before the days of all the experts(?) hanging around the service buildings. Out of town, we almost always had someone from that areas line section as a guidedog. Around our own area, we took pride in learning and teaching the new guys to learn all the circuits in the service area. Granted we were not NYC or LA. Anyway, we thought we did a good job and were proud every time we could get some lights back on. You all be safe out there and watch out for your buddy.
    "Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional."

  3. #23
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    Aug 2002
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    Heres how ild run a storm. I would man every substation and when the breakers started to trip I.ld open em up. As crews started to arive I would asign them to a feeder. Each group would have five linecrews a digger and a treecrew and a supervisor. Each supervisor would take controll of the first set of switches outside the station on the feeder they were assigned. Each group would test dead and ground from the first set of switches to the next set of switches. I would try and get the three phase main trunk of the feeder restored and move forward, just like an advancing army. After the three phase was restored each group would work on the single phase taps. Restoration would be simple and stupid.

    Seams every storm today is micromanaged from a storm room a hundred miles away. Maned by inexpierence, who dont know a recloser from a sectionalizer. They get lost in a sea of spreadsheets and repeat data. Noone can make a desision and crews end up waiting in stagging areas for countless hours.

    Lineman are pretty good at restoring power. If you give a team of lineman a feedermap and complete controll over it , its amazing what can be accomplished.

  4. #24

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    top I wished it was ran like that, but as you know you cant tell the higher ups a damn thing. I worked Irene in Miami back in 99 or 2000 and we would have 5 tickets for the same damn job because it was being ran out of a storm room like you mentioned. It was a headache! FPL is screwed up in South Florida when it comes to storms.

    Of course we enjoyed it because most of the jobs we had were already done. I think it two weeks we picked up maybe 2 spans and changed out one xformer. We pulled 2 100 hour weeks too so you can imagine what we did most of the time. Boring! If they let a lineman run the show when it comes to outages things would go much smoother.

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    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.

  6. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pootnaigle View Post
    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.
    Post the pictures Poot!!
    Some other utilities back lot dolley hanging from anothers crane, that's worth seeing!

  7. #27

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    The storm that I just came from was definately run by people who were apparently not taking any advice from their people in the field, while we are speaking of how we would run everything, I would have my second string doing damage assesment and calling in and staging material so when the out of town help got there they would have that lineman for their bird dog as he would know everything that needed to be done on that feeder laterals and all. I would have my more productive crews getting on priority feeders such as hospitals, restaraunts and motels to accomadate the out of town help, engineers and or meter shop personell could lead the tree crews to the addresses with a print from the lineman where tree work was needed, with the right people in place ie line crews and other field personell the company can restore power like a well oiled machine.

  8. #28
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    South East Texas
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    Quote Originally Posted by hotwiretamer View Post
    Post the pictures Poot!!
    Some other utilities back lot dolley hanging from anothers crane, that's worth seeing!
    I should have been more specific. There were lots of pictures taken but I wasnt the guy with a camera, thus I have none to post.But it was way kewl. lifted them things from one yard to another till the whole alley was done The cranes had been hired to remove entire trees out of the easements and were handy so we used em.

  9. #29

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    Just got back. Spent our whole tour in Jersey. Started out at PSE&G and ended at JCP&L. Had a blast, got alot of work done and no one got hurt.

    EL, we did alot of work in Lincoln Park, too.

  10. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by TRAMPLINEMAN View Post
    Just got back. Spent our whole tour in Jersey. Started out at PSE&G and ended at JCP&L. Had a blast, got alot of work done and no one got hurt.

    EL, we did alot of work in Lincoln Park, too.
    JCP&L is our sister company, first I was told I was gonna work for MetEd but they then sent us straight to Jersey......I was actually all over northern and central Jersey..customers there were very good to us considering the circumstances. I see the fatman(gov. Christy) was badmouthing Jersey Central and First Energy quite a bit....knowing him he will blame it on the field workers. We had a great time, the commradary during that kind of thing is awesome....met a ton of new people from all over the country. My partner and I were reattaching house services.....we were working with all substation guys...we had a crew of seven and our supervisor, who was from out in western PA, I think, took very good care of us, and also made us laugh a lot.....good work, good times and damn good money!
    Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
    Abraham Lincoln

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