ROCHELLE — Rochelle Municipal Utilities recently welcomed home three members of its electric department that worked on storm recovery efforts in Georgia following Hurricane Helene. 

Linemen Jimmy Turcato, Todd Johnson and Casey Howard traveled to Georgia on Sept. 25 and returned Oct. 7. They spent time in Jackson, Elberton and Douglas, Georgia, working to restore power for residents. On Wednesday, Oct. 9, RMU sent another crew of four on a similar trip to Lakeland, Florida to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.  

Turcato, Johnson and Howard spoke with the News-Leader Oct. 9 to describe their experience in storm recovery efforts. RMU Superintendent of Electric Operations Blake Toliver said that RMU is part of a list through the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency (IMEA) of utilities willing to send linemen to communities in need. 

RMU was contacted by Electric Cities of Georgia (ECG), an organization that helps care for all of the municipalities in Georgia, and sent a crew to Jackson before Turcato, Johnson and Howard were redeployed twice after that. RMU linemen volunteer for the storm recovery work and are paid for their mutual aid efforts. 

“At the end of the day it's a feel-good effort,” Toliver said. “Because you're getting people's power turned back on and a lot of these people are very thankful to the linemen out there doing the job. We had several people reach out and say our crew was doing a great job down there and they were very thankful and they would have Rochelle back in a heartbeat if they ever needed help again and would be willing to come up here to help if we ever needed it. Those kinds of things speak volumes of the crew we sent and they're representative of Rochelle. Even though they're helping another community, it still says RMU on the side of the truck.”

After starting out in Jackson in central Georgia, the RMU crew went to Elberton in northeast Georgia and spent three days there. They then were sent to Douglas in southeast Georgia for seven days before returning home. 

“We would set poles and put line up,” Johnson said. “Douglas was the most damaged area we were in. There was a lot of line on the ground. All their feeders were locked out when we got there and we had to get all the wire back in the air before they could even start restoring power to individuals. The population of Douglas is 12,500. We got there and there were 89 linemen there. A few days later there were 170 linemen there.”

Turcato said the trip was a learning experience for him. He’s worked after a lot of storms, but the destruction he saw in Georgia still stuck with him. People he spoke to on the trip said it was the worst hurricane that’s hit them. 

Johnson said the trip allowed him to work with and meet new people. This was the worst storm he’s ever worked after. He marveled at the storm’s ability to damage an entire town in Douglas. 

During their drive from Elberton to Douglas, Johnson and Turcato said it was strange to see every town in between without power. 

“It can make you nervous,” Turcato said. “You don't know if there's going to be food or fuel or whether the roads will be open or washed out or covered by trees. It's so many unknowns, it's hard. We're used to street lights being on and you're driving in these places and it's pitch black. It's weird. It can be eerie.”

RMU linemen found it tough to put infrastructure back in place while not being from the area and not knowing the layout. They started with looking at what infrastructure was laying on the ground and went from there to do their part in restoring power. 

“But the main thing is putting up poles and wire,” Howard said. “We've all done that. It doesn't matter where in the country you go. You stick a pole in the ground and pull wire up and put it on. That’s the job.”

Toliver said the recent hiring of two new linemen has helped RMU with being short handed as it's sent crew members on storm recovery efforts. 

“It does make us shorthanded and you're always leery of an event in our own territory,” Toliver said. But these are gestures we provide for other utilities in hopes that they'll be reciprocated if we ever need the same response. As long as we have the crews available to go, I think Rochelle is always going to try and send whatever help it can. Because we hope it gets paid back in the future if we need it.”