Additional Duquesne Light Crews Head South To Help Restore Power
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PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Forty more Duquesne Light employees left Woods Run and are headed to Florida to help with the millions of power outages that still plague the state after Hurricane Irma.
"All the utilities have to get together and pull their resources during times like this. There isn't enough people on site in Florida for this type of disaster," said Service Center Manager with Duquesne Light Dave James.
James is one of the employees who volunteered to head to the Sunshine State to help Florida Power and Light. This isn't the first time he's stepped up during a natural disaster. He says before you do the work, you have to make sure you take care of the necessities.
"You have to get fuel, you have to find food and you have to find beds during a disaster and that's usually the hardest part. And then, you do your work after you take care of the logistics," James said.
James said he and his crew will be staged out of Lake City, Florida, which is the north central part of the state, but they'll be ready to go wherever they're needed.
"It's probably going to be standard storm work. Trees down, poles down, wires down. This will be a little different because it's in Florida," James said.
On Monday, 25 Duquesne Light employees headed to Florida. Dozens of crews from West Penn Power are there, too. Georgia is also dealing with hundreds of thousands of outages. Officials with Duquesne Light say this has become the largest restoration effort in the history of the electric utility industry.
"There are about 60,000 workers that have been mobilized across the country and as far north as Canada to come down and help restore power to all of those residents in those two states," said Jessica Rock with Duquesne Light.
Duquesne Light crews anticipate being in Florida for the next two weeks.
