Picking Up the Pieces

They called it a historic bomb cyclone, and the storm that hit Vermont Friday, Dec. 23, lived up to its name. It tore down trees and branches all over the state, especially in central Vermont, where Washington Electric Cooperative has hundreds of miles of power lines that thread through wooded, ledgy hillsides. [Click on headline or photo for more.] Many of WEC’s several thousand customers lost power, some for several days, one of the longest outages in recent memory. To help mend broken lines and replace shattered poles, utility linemen came from as far away as New Brunswick. By the end of the week, power had been restored to most customers, but not without a tremendous amount of work on the ground and in the air in bucket lifts. I spent some time with a crew replacing and rigging new poles and reconnecting severed lines in East Montpelier: linemen from the Littleton, MA, Electric Department, contract workers from Vance Line Construction in West Danville, and WEC’s Donnie Singelton, shown above, walking along a downed line on Cummings Road. For a gallery, click here.