Area linemen helping to restore power after Sandy

By DONNA FARLEY

SEMO News Service

ALLENTOWN, PENN. -- A crew of about 20 lineman from Poplar Bluff, Mo., and the surrounding area are in Pennsylvania today helping restore power to the nearly 6 million homes and businesses on the East Coast still impacted by outages following Hurricane Sandy.

The men were deployed by Pike Energy Solutions last Thursday, James Coffee of Poplar Bluff explained in a phone interview. The group also includes residents of Corning, Ark., and Gatewood, Doniphan and Puxico in Missouri.

Pike has deployed 1,700 workers to the area. They are working 16-hour days from hotels operated by generators. There are about 220,000 people without power in the area where Coffee's crew is working, nearly all of three counties.

He does not know how long they will be gone.

"That's the hidden question here," said Coffee, who has 18 years experience as a lineman. "There will be people here without power for quite a while."

Winds topped 80 miles per hour in the Allentown, Pa., area where his crew worked earlier this week.

Coffee said the damage consisted of many downed trees, but was not as bad as what he saw after Hurricane Katrina. As far as massive destruction of power lines, Coffee added he has never seen anything worse than Southeast Missouri's ice storm in 2009.

He expects his crew to be finished in the Allentown area by the middle of next week before moving onto New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Nearly 2 million people remain without power in New York state, where the Associated Press attributes 30 deaths to Sandy.

A former Poplar Bluff resident, Heather Whittenburg, has been contending with power outages in New Jersey, according to her mother Cheryl Whittenburg. Her daughter has two children under 2 years old, Whittenburg said, and was concerned about keeping the house warm. More than 2 million residents remain without power in New Jersey today, according to the AP.

Heather's husband travels to work by train and then subway and has been told it could be three weeks before the lines are working again.

Julie Hillis, a 2008 Poplar Bluff High School graduate, is fortunate to have only a 12-block walk from her 72nd Street home to her work for a children's clothing company on 60th Street.

"The transit is still closed ... It could be for quite some time," she said Wednesday. "There are tons of people on the streets and traffic is awful."

Coworkers who are normally able to commute by 45 minute drive, and less by train, saw their trip to work extended to several hours yesterday, she said.

Two blocks from her work is the 57th Street crane, which was damaged by high winds Monday and many feared for a time it would fall from the 74th floor. Hillis said many streets surrounding the crane's location are closed.

She was fortunate never to lose power, according to Hillis, who moved to New York City four months ago and waited out Sandy at home on her birthday.

Heather Flannigan Garrett, a 1996 Twin Rivers graduate, said her family was prepared but untouched by the destruction surrounding the hurricane. They live in Clifton Park, N.Y., 12 miles north of Albany. She believes the remnants of Hurricane Irene brought more rain to the area in 2011 than the recent storm.

"I think people really tried to prepare," said Flannigan Garrett, adding store shelves were empty of bread and other items Sunday evening. "We were really lucky ... It never showed up."