Where are all the linemen coming from that are heading to Florida?
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Every power company has a bunch of trucks and linemen. There are minimum needs for the area. When a severe weather event of mass scale is anticipated, the affected areas request something called mutual aid. Basically places unaffected will send some of their people, trucks, and equipment to help fix the damage faster. The people themselves may benefit from over time or hazard pay and additional perks to go. The organizations sending them benefit from assurance that others will assist them if those events happen there. This also is the idea behind fire, EMS, rescue, and law enforcement mutual aid agreements.
They come from all over North America. These are people who normally work for other power companies. Normally a power company have several linemen working for them to do routine maintenance, upgrades as well as handling outages. They have several in order to handle multiple things at once and also have people on hand in case of illnesses or people taking vacations. During big emergencies like hurricanes the power company may let one of their linemen volunteer for the emergency work. The power company still have several other linemen working and may be able to defer upgrades and maintenance if needed. It could potentially slow down the repairs of outages but these problems are small compared to what they are dealing with in the hurricane region.
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All over.
Those guys make bank when this happens which is why so many are willing to make the trip. It hard ass work, but pays well above normal wages.
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There are companies that just do emergency power restoration. I’m a lineman BTW
I got a call from numerous companies with various pay rates days before huricane helene hit. Was told to be in Ohio at 4 Tuesday, drove down to Florida in a derrick truck in a day and a half, dot hour restrictions don’t apply to us, the area we went to was not significantly impacted, drove to south Carolina, heading to Florida any day now
Personally hate working for the storm companies, they have a bunch of guys who may not be able to hold down steady work, questionable tooling and equipment, but a lot of utility companies like them because they can mobilize faster
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To add to everyone’s great answers, it’s not as though they get in their trucks and go. It’s incredibly organized. I worked in disaster relief evaluating all the responders and making calls to rotate or pull them before they hit the wall. As a rule, with maybe with one or two exceptions, volunteers who just showed up were directed to some non-profit on the distant edge of the disaster where they got to sort blankets by what they’re made of. The exceptions were those who had extended experience in high-stress crises situations. Maybe not in said disaster, but close enough.
Those working in the heart of the disaster have pretty much been invited and are all part of a much broader network that is organizing everything. It might look like chaos on the ground to most people, but it’s not. And the reason it’s not chaos is that everyone that’s supposed to be there knows exactly how to do their job and every person above them trusts that they know how to do their job. It’s not a time for egos to get in the way.
Driving around the day after helene just missed tallahassee i saw line trucks with tags as far away as ohio.
In the US, each state agreed back in the 60s to make their power grids compatible and connect them each to the other. Except Texas, but that’s a different ELI5. The reason is so that states can buy and sell power from each other, this is why Atlanta mostly retained power during their last ice storm but Texas did not.
Anyway, one of the consequences of having an inter-compatible grid is that your maintenance crews can be moved around during an emergency because they all learn the same types of equipment and practices, to the same expectations/standards.
Every utility company in the eastern interconnect can send trucks and crews to any other state during a major event like this, which is the “where” part of your question. In the same way you town or city might send (or see( firefighters or police from the neighboring town occasionally, utility companies can do that during a big event. The linemen going to Florida could be from anywhere in the entire country, and they probably are! Florida uses equipment that is compatible with the equipment, tools, and training of every other state (except Texas) so the linemen can just show up with their normal equipment and be ready to work. Some may even come from the western interconnect though that is a somewhat longer drive for them.
They will park just outside the forecast storm area, probably in north Florida for this storm, and once the wind settles they will be briefed on which crews are assigned to which areas, which roads are open, where they are expected to sleep (usually a church or venue set up with cots and a kitchen), who the local utility crews are in their assigned area, who the emergency people will be, etc.
In fact, Florida sent crews to North Carolina less than a month ago, and they are now accepting crews from out of state. Sometimes you give, sometimes you receive.
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