Power restored: The linemen who make it happen

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) — When winter storms roll across the prairie, power outages can happen fast.

But behind every light that turns back on, there’s a team working through snow and wind and extreme cold to make it happen.

For Linemen, fixing winter outages is a race against the elements.

“The cold changes a lot with the lines… it’s harder to get around in the winter time,” said lead lineman, Eric Hellandsaas.

Getting to the problem is the first hurdle.

“Power goes out when the weather is the worst, right? So, we’re out working when there’s no plows on the road… even driving to get to somewhere a half hour away, it might take an hour for us to get there,” said lead lineman, Brody Vose.

And it’s not just the terrain, it’s the gear and fatigue.

“You’re wearing a lot more winter gear, it’s wearing you down faster, especially if you have to climb poles. Fatigue gets to be a pretty big thing. We’re out there for a lot of hours, sometimes over 24 hours at a time,“ explained Hellandsaas.

“Your hands do go numb… they freeze and you can’t feel your hands or limbs at some point… but we do the best we can to ensure the power comes on as quickly as it can,” said Vose.

When an outage happens, they use a “spider-web” system to ensure the most critical services get powered back on first.

“We’ll go and hit the main life-saving services — like hospitals, fire department, water, sewer. And then we’ll work down the system to our transmission lines and our substations and then we will go to our main feeder lines and then from there tap lines and individual services,” explained apprentice lineman, Aidan Redstone.

Beyond the cold weather, they have to keep an eye on traffic.

“We’ve got to be on our toes more working along roadways,” added Vose.

For most people, we like to think restoring power is as easy as flipping a switch.

But getting to a pole is the finish line of a journey that started miles away. So when your lights come back on, make sure to thank a lineman.

“When you have the people that come out and say, ‘Hey, thanks for getting this back on for us,’ that means a lot to all of us around here,” said journeyman lineman, Teight Madler.

Gratitude: the moving motivator for a power team that provides the essentials in the worst of conditions.

To see updates on an outage, you can track restoration progress and estimated repair times on your local utility provider’s website or mobile app.

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