A crew of six linemen from Platte-Clay Electric Cooperative deployed from its Kearney headquarters last Friday in three trucks to assist with Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in Georgia.
The crew is part of a coordinated effort by the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives to respond to a call for help by the Excelsior-Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) in Metter, Georgia. 100 percent of Excelsior EMC consumer-members were without power after the storm. Excelsior EMC has nearly 25,500 active meter services.
“We’re proud to be among the many electric cooperatives answering the call for help by our peers in Georgia as they recover and rebuild from the devastating storm,” said Dave Deihl, CEO and General Manager of Platte-Clay Electric Cooperative. “We believe in the cooperative values of helping each other in times of need.”
In total, 30 rural electric cooperatives from across the state of Missouri will send a total of 197 linemen to lend a hand with recovery efforts in Georgia.
Platte-Clay Electric Foremen Aaron Wood and Tom Hale, journeymen Linemen Chris Smith and Heath Buckler, and apprentice linemen Heath Maley and Conner Young arrived Saturday to help with power restoration efforts.
This crew will join thousands of other lineworkers and personnel from across the cooperative family to fix the unprecedented damage Helene delivered in the Southeast, which left more than 1.15 million electric cooperative members in the dark, as of Sept. 27. The teams will assess the damage and work to assign resources as efficiently as possible, while prioritizing safety in this dangerous environment.
Repairs could take weeks in the aftermath the Category 4 hurricane, which made landfall late Thursday in northwest Florida. Torrential rains and winds of 140 mph ripped down lines, uprooted trees and flooded coastal areas. Though Helene weakened to tropical storm status as it moved through Georgia, damage in the state was still brutal.
Missouri’s electric cooperatives have a long history of lending a helping hand to its cooperative peers in trying times. It is an example of the sixth principle that guides electric cooperatives, which is cooperation among cooperatives.
Platte-Clay’s most recent deployment responding to a hurricane was in 2021 when crews traveled to Louisiana following Hurricane Ida.
PCEC serves more than 26,500 accounts and nearly 3,100 miles of energized line in Buchanan, Caldwell, Clay, Clinton, DeKalb, Platte and Ray counties. PCEC was established in 1938 as part of the Rural Electrification Act, and today is among the fastest-growing cooperatives in the state of Missouri.