LES sends 18 workers to the Southeast ahead of Hurricane Helene

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Two Lincoln Electric System crews headed down to Georgia on Wednesday afternoon ahead of Hurricane Helene.

The group of 18 is expected to be in Albany by Thursday night.

Six employees from the Grand Island Utilites Department are traveling with them.

Once the storm hits, the utility workers will help restore power in places hit by the hurricane.

A team from Nebraska Task Force One, the state’s elite search and rescue group, is also headed south to help.

Fredrick Rumery is the project management supervisor at LES.

He said the crews are expecting a lot of wind damage, much like they saw during a storm that hit Lincoln this summer.

‘We had over 30,000 customers off, and that was from a high-wind thunderstorm where we experienced extremely high winds that did damage to our overhead facilities as well as some of our underground facilities,” he said. “And a lot of what we saw here during that storm is the same that they’ll see down there: the overhead facilities, the poles, the wires that come down.”

Rumery said the Lincoln storm is another reason why LES wants to help now.

“We received mutual aid. We had companies come in and provide mutual aid services for us to help us get customers restored in a timely manner,” he said. “And so when we have the opportunity to do that, it’s good for us to repay that favor.”

Rumery said the crews will have to adjust to working in a different environment.

“Different voltages, it could be different animals, it could be different insects — things that we just aren’t used to,” he said. “Where are the hospitals located?” he said.

The crews also took extra resources with them, including three bucket trucks and three digger derricks for setting poles in the ground.

LES said it will keep the community updated on the crews’ progress on its social media pages.