Video: 4-County Electric Linemen Are Hitting The Road

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Around five-million people in Florida are left without power.

Electric crews from all over the country are heading there to help.

4-County Electric is sending over a dozen men Wednesday morning, to one of the Florida areas hit by Hurricane Irma.

4-County linemen will be going down to help one of their sister electric cooperatives.

Several thousand residents are left without power in their service area, and the Mississippi linemen are ready to get their power turned back on.

It’s a scene 4-County intern, Haley Tallent, has seen time and time again, growing up as the daughter of a 4-County lineman.

“Dad, you know, when you coming back, you know, and he’d tell me not too long, you know, and I remember there was some crying going on, but it was more of a heart-warming feeling knowing, my mom knew dad had to go, my dad had to go and help the ones that didn’t have power. She knew and understood that.”

Now, the families of fifteen 4-County linemen will watch as their love ones head to Florida.

The group will be driving around ten hours to help their sister electric cooperative, Clay Electric.

“We decided we would go with our heavy construction crews and then supplement them with a couple of other construction folks, because a lot of what’s going to be happening down there is just putting up lines and putting up poles and that’s what these guys are really good at,” says 4-County Electric Manager of Public Relations and Marketing, Jon Turner.

The traveling linemen’s main task will be to give linemen a chance to rest, while they’ll working to restore over 100,000 power outages.

“You can really get quickly overwhelmed in a situation like this. You’re working long days, you’re working in dangerous conditions, you know, you’re not at home, you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, you’re busting your rear-end to get power back on. You get tired real easy. It is such a relief for, you know, other folks to come and help take that burden off of you,” says Turner.

This will be this lineman’s first time working out of state after a major storm.

He’s looking forward to helping those in need, including other linemen.

“It can get pretty tiresome working 36-48 hours straight, so I can imagine those guys are pretty tired. They’ll be glad to see us to come help them,” says 4-County Electric lineman, Curtis Collier.

While 15 lineman will be out of their normal service area, there will still be plenty of crews here to assist customers.