Crews from Rocky Mountain Power company plan to go east Sunday to help with electrical outages expected from Hurricane Irma.
The 52-person group will include journeymen, managers and a mechanic, all of whom will team up with Georgia Power once they arrive on the East Coast, according to a news release from the Utah-based power company.
Once there, they’ll divide up into crews of three people with a bucket truck, line truck and service body/pickup, the release said.
Employees from Cedar City, Moab, Price, American Fork, Layton, the Jordan Valley, Salt Lake Metro, and Idaho crews from Rexburg and Shelly assembled for the trip Saturday, the release said, and will leave Salt Lake City at 6 a.m. Sunday.
It’s not unusual for the company to make itself “available when there‘s a crisis and other teams need help,” said Rocky Mountain Power spokeswoman Tiffany Erickson.
Relief efforts in national crisis situations are organized by Edison Electric Institute, Erickson said, and though the local team was not called out to help with Texas’ recent Hurricane Harvey, they were recruited to help with Irma.
The crews need no additional education or training, Erickson said, because the nature of electrical transmission and generation is uniform throughout the United States. Crews are stocking up on supplies this weekend, trying to be prepared for ”anything.”
”You’ve got areas that will be completely decimated,” Erickson said, so crews may be restoring lines and power poles, while others will work to repair substations.