Georgia Power employees step up to assist in recovery after Helene

Georgia Power’s Storm Center begins tracking weather disturbances as soon as they form. Plans are put in place from where to stage crews to how many and what kind of supplies to stock for an eventual restoration effort. It’s a process that line crews and trouble workers know well, and although 16-hour days and the potential to spend weeks at a time away from home and family aren’t comfortable, they are part and parcel of the job.

When Hurricane Helene breached the border of South Georgia in the first hours of Friday September 27, line crews, troublemen, and other front-line workers were already staged at key points around the state ready to begin restoring power as soon as it was safe to do so.

For the rest of the teams at Georgia Power, that Thursday night played out much like that of millions of others across the state, where Helene’s hundred-mile-per-hour winds and torrential rains uprooted trees and power lines while causing rivers, lakes, and creeks, to jump their banks – washing away roads and flooding homes and businesses up and down the storm’s hardest-hit areas. When the storm cleared, what was left behind was the historic destruction from the worst hurricane to hit the state in Georgia Power’s more than 140 years.

As dawn broke across Georgia, Georgia Power employees who spent the night in their homes got their first look at the destruction Helene had brought and, like their counterparts who were already hard at work assessing and repairing the record-breaking damage, got to work.

While line crews began the grueling task of rebuilding parts of Georgia’s power grid, other Georgia Power employees across the state jumped in to aid in restoration efforts – supporting crews, clearing debris, and lending a hand to their neighbors.

Vanessa and Heather work on Georgia Power’s Economic Development team, where they pour their energy into helping to support industry and bring new business to the state of Georgia. This week, however, they are reporting to a crew staging site in Claxton before sunrise each day – coordinating the logistics and delivery of meals, snacks, and water to more than 120 lineworkers. Officially, they coordinate the order and delivery (in their own vehicles) of meals from a food truck brought in from Atlanta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – working late into the night to keep crews fed before working out the next day’s plan as they are finally able to sit down to a meal of their own.

Unofficially, the two marketing professionals are keeping their car stocked with snacks, water, candy, and energy drinks to be able to offer a quick break and a treat to crews who are, at this point, on their seventh consecutive day of working sunup to sundown to get power back on for Georgians.

“It’s inspiring to see a community come together in this way” said Vanessa, who is spending the week staged in Savannah, more than two hours from her home and nearly an hour from the crew’s base camp. “These crews are leaving their homes and families to get out here and get power back on. A lot of them don’t have power themselves. We’re happy to do whatever we can to help.”

Employees across the Georgia Power system are jumping in to help wherever possible. From running meals and snacks to crews and coordinating logistics at the nearly 30 base camps throughout the affected areas to translating crucial information for customers who may not speak English, employees throughout the state are taking an “all-hands-on-deck” mentality towards recovery after Hurricane Helene, no matter what their day-to-day role might be.

Tess, a communications specialist from Statesboro, woke up at 4 a.m. on Friday morning to the sound of her flat-top grill being pushed across her backyard by Helene’s ferocious winds. By 5 o’clock she was texting with Georgia Power regional staff and working on plans to support the crews that were assessing damage by hand without the aid of cellular service or internet in the Coastal Georgia region. Since the restaurants in town were without power, Tess and her team made their way to a grocery store whose power was among the first to be restored, where they gathered ingredients and made breakfast for the crews in their region on that same flat top that had nearly escaped the night before.

“The mentality is ‘How can we help?’” she says. “I can’t climb the pole and get the power back on, so how can I support you?”

Tess was without power and water for five days after Helene’s impact, but now that some in her community are getting their lights turned back on, she says her phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

“Our phones are buzzing constantly with folks asking ‘How can we help? What can we bring?’”

Stories continue to come in from every part of the state of the ways in which Georgia Power employees are stepping up in order to help serve their communities after the storm’s historic impact. An external affairs leader in Augusta walked five miles to get to his operating headquarters while a team member in Vidalia cut his way from his house to work with a chainsaw, stopping along the way to pick up a co-worker. A Georgia Power retiree even drove from Milledgeville to Augusta with his pickup truck bed filled with five-gallon gas cans in order to get fuel to two doctors who were unable to get from their homes to their local hospital.

As communities across Helene’s massive footprint continue to be rebuilt, Georgia Power will be there. Not only restoring and rebuilding the state’s energy grid but doing whatever it takes to live up to its motto of being “A Citizen Wherever We Serve.”