Last Thursday, as people were hoisting turkeys into ovens or mashing potatoes, a couple of Stowe Electric Department line workers packed their gear and went to rescue New Hampshire.
On Wednesday night, Thanksgiving Eve, New Hampshire was pounded by a storm, and a foot of wet, heavy snow weighed down tree branches and snapped power lines.
Gov. Maggie Hassan said roughly 207,000 people lost their electricity — the fourth-highest number in state history. New Hampshire’s population is 1.3 million.
Of those 207,000, about 22,000 can be thankful for Stowe Electric.
Stowe linemen Silas Power — yes, that’s his real name — and Norm Griffith fielded a call for help from the N.H. Electric Cooperative, and volunteered immediately. They were already on-call in Vermont. They got the call for help Thursday at 11 a.m. and worked until 7 Friday morning. Then they and almost 300 others worked 16-hour shifts to restore power to 22,000 co-op customers.
“We were cutting trees and fixing broken wires,” Power said Tuesday. “There were slippery roads, and we did a lot on camp roads, where it was really tight and narrow.”
Power and Griffith reported first to the N.H. co-op service area in Alton, near the southern tip of Lake Winnipesaukee. After that, they moved on to another town and helped restore power there, too.
Jim Horan, the co-op’s operations supervisor, said Power and Griffith were part of an A-Team of skilled linemen: The Stowe crew regularly places well at pole-top rescue competitions and other such “linemen rodeos,” and the New Hampshire workers are no slouches, either, Horan said.
“They are very, very skilled and excellent linemen,” Horan said Tuesday. “They blended in well, and we bonded well, and they could jump on our system and go with only minimal instruction.”
Power said people who live near Lake Winnipesaukee staunchly oppose trimming trees near the lake, so huge trees were growing right up against the wires. It made for some potential dangers, because when a tree goes down, lines can get taut and whip-snap at any time. That wasn’t a problem this trip, though.
“It was very, very tight working conditions,” he said. “But we had a safe trip. We take our safety very seriously.”
It was a bit of a bummer missing turkey dinner — Power’s wife and three children had their holiday without him. But plenty of families in New Hampshire were in the dark on Thanksgiving; many people lost power for more than 24 hours.
“They understand that other people needed our help,” Power said of his family.
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