• Lighting one neighborhood at a time.
When hurricane force winds tear the world apart, or rain drenches the earth, destabilizing everything in the ground, folks need a hero – a hero that can restore dignity and normalcy, some ray of light in the darkness of destruction and despair.
Humbly, hundreds of heroes answer the call, gathering from the four corners of the continent to plant and climb poles and string powerlines, restoring light, running water and relief, devoting 16, 18 or 20 hours a day to rebuild the infrastructure that brings electrical service to communities that have been devastated by natural disasters.
Among those heroes are three Lower Valley Energy Journeyman Linemen from Star Valley. Clay Skinner, Clancy Erickson and Jayden Phelps leave their homes and families for weeks at a time to begin restoring the necessary electrical power to hurting families and crippled communities. Though all three have served dozens of communities, their most recent service took them to North Carolina and Florida.
As Hurricane Helene raced toward Florida, Clay and his team gathered in North Carolina on September 26, about an hour and half west of Asheville, to prepare electrical rescue of communities that were expected to be hit hard along the Florida Panhandle. They were to leave for Florida on Friday morning, September 27.
“The next morning, it was pounding rain like nothing I’ve experienced in Star Valley,” Clay admitted. The team soon realized that they would not be traveling as expected. “There were reports that the roads were gone, and we were pretty much stuck there. This got serious in a hurry, and we were surprised! We essentially started working our way towards Asheville, fixing the power lines as we went, working towards where everyone was hardest hit. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! The amount of flooding and the amount of tree damage was very impressive.”
Rain levels unleashed by the storm in western North Carolina ranged between 14 and 31 inches. Clay shared deep concern for the residents of those areas. Poverty was never their friend but would now make it extremely difficult to recover from the devastation of the storm. “I don’t know how some of the people are going to recover from that.”
There was flooding, mudslides and “huge 200-year-old trees that were just tipped over where it had gotten so wet that the ground just wouldn’t hold the trees anymore. This snapped off power poles and tore down wire everywhere.”
Though Clay and his team were successful in restoring a significant amount of the power over the next 10 days, roads were still being reconstructed and “we were told before we left that it would be another six weeks before they had water.” Though some reports indicate water is more accessible today, there is an enormous amount of reconstruction needed in those mountain communities.
Fast forward to October 8 with the arrival of Hurricane Milton to the west coast of Florida. Jayden and Clancy, with their team, were traveling from Hartford, Connecticut, destined for areas in Florida under tornado watch. They found themselves stopped dead by winds that leveled homes, tossed vehicles and SUV’s and overturned tractor-trailer trucks.
“They had something like six tornadoes at one time, and these weren’t just little tornadoes by any means,” said Clancy. “They were a big deal. They picked cars up and threw them. They broke poles and trees. You name it. They were flipping RV trailers upside down, vehicles upside down. There was one house that it took down to the foundation. One person said it was all of a sudden like a freight train was coming through the neighborhood and he opened the door to look outside and it blew him back in against the wall! He and three other average size males were in the house and they tried to shut the door and couldn’t shut the door. So, they waited. It only lasted about 30 seconds and I’m sure that was a long 30 seconds.”
Jayden was right alongside Clancy. Their team worked for 11 days, restoring power to west Palm Beach. “When those disasters and storms come through the community that you’re working in,” the people are so grateful, said Jayden. “We had people bringing us food every day and water and everybody was coming to say ‘Thanks.’ That stuff’s, for sure, the coolest for me.”
For Clancy, it’s friendship that grows in the midst of adversity. “It’s just neat, and it’s a good experience. You get to help the elderly and women and children,” working beside team members that you may never have seen before, but who become your closest friends nearly overnight. “That’s a good feeling. It seems like everyone is in such a hurry and kind of doing their own thing and everybody’s worried about themselves, but when it comes down to it, at the end of the day, people still get together and there are still a lot of good people in the world.”
Specialized knowledge makes these men valuable, but their sacrifice makes them heroes. “There’s nothing quite like getting the power on and a neighborhood cheering, you know,” Clay said in a voice thick with emotion and gratitude to be part of something so special. “There’s not a ton of linemen in the country and when something like this happens, I mean, it pretty much should be all hands-on-deck.”
