Austin Energy discusses how linemen stay warm while repairing damaged power lines
has nearly 400 line workers on the job. 100 of those workers are from out of town. Our Sally Hernandez talked to Austin Energy about the crews working to get the power back on. How do you make sure that they are safe up there, that they are being fed, that they are warm, that you're being taken care of? And I mean, obviously they're working very hard, but you don't want them to be exhausted when they're handling such dangerous things. I've spent a lot of time around crews and certainly over the last several months. And I can tell you that these men and women are just incredible individuals. Not just the men and women that are going up in those bucket trucks, but also the ones that's supporting them with logistics and food and finding them hotels.
These are individuals that go away from their families during the most dire of circumstances, may not even have power at their own homes and leave their children, leave their wives, leave their husbands to go out and do this difficult work. And it's dangerous work even in the most optimal of weather circumstances. Now imagine doing it in freezing cold, rain, frozen rain and dealing with thousands and thousands of kilowatts of current. I'm glad you mentioned it. Logistically speaking, this is a huge crew of people to keep fed, watered, nourished, sustained. We have to give them time off. They have to be able to talk with their families.
They have to make sure that they're, the things are okay at home. These are all things that we're asking them to do under very difficult circumstances. So the people supporting them do this 24 hours a day as well. Finding hotel rooms, finding catering services that can get them food to a lot of different locations. It's a 24 hour a day job. What can we do to help them? So anyone who is experiencing an outage, it may seem strange, unplug as much as you can so that we can keep that power on when it's restored. The other thing I would offer is that because we are seeing such widespread outages, Austin Energy has equipment and personnel throughout our 400 square mile service area.
We may need to get into your backyard to make a repair. We may need to get over those lines that are near your house. So we'll be knocking on doors. We'll be asking for access to those places. I granted access just the other day to some crews that were near my property. All of our crews will be properly identifying themselves. They'll have ID.
They'll be clearly marked as Austin Energy employees. You can trust the fact that they're there to do good work and we ask you to let them do that work so that we can all be restored as soon as possible. Heroes indeed, Matt Mitchell with Austin Energy. Thanks again for talking to us. It's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
kxanaustin, kxanaustinnews, KXAN_News