Linemen pour in from outside Kentucky to help tornado recovery

LONDON, Ky. (FOX 56) — Where do you even start reconnecting a community in pieces? North Georgia EMC lineman Bailey Saylors is one of hundreds in London from out of state answering the call.

“Everything’s scattered. We had two poles that were 30 feet from where they started off, and were in three pieces,” Saylors said, explaining some of the challenges of a storm response.  “A lot of times, like right here, the wire got caught up in some trees and just wrapped the trees. It got wrapped up in houses. It broke; trees fell on it.”

The team of roughly a dozen men has been here since Saturday night. A KU spokesman said at least 8 states have sent recovery personnel: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. Altogether, about 1,100 people are working on power recovery across the storm-affected communities.

 “Right now, they’re setting a pole. It’s a dead-end pole. They’re going to set it with the wire on it and we’re actually going to pull it up to this pole we started at this morning. And we’re doing the same thing on the other side. And we basically we build the main one all the way, and then we branch off and just do a little bit at a time,” Saylors said, laying out the process.

Saylors said they all prepare for at most a two-week trip, and they will continue to respond pole-by-pole until they’re told by the local energy utility their services are no longer needed.   “Emotionally, like just seeing that all these people are going through this,” Saylors said, explaining some of the job’s biggest challenges. “We take it as pride for our job to come in here. Just to get the power back on. That’s what we strive to do.”