Two crews from the Board of Public Utilities have joined line crews on their way from Kansas to Florida, according to Board of Public Utilities spokesman David Mehlhaff.
The four linemen from the BPU are also bringing two BPU trucks to assist in the disaster relief work, he said. About 30 total linemen left Kansas for Florida on Thursday.
Florida is in the path of Hurricane Irma, a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, and there are also two other hurricanes currently south of the United States.
When the BPU staff last talked to the crews, they were in Atlanta, Ga., and were working their way to Orlando, Fla., where they will connect with a public utility and be sent out to whatever area needs them, Mehlhaff said. They might be gone as long as 10 days or less, he added.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency reached out to a national public utilities organization this week, asking for emergency crews to be sent to Florida, he said.
“It looks like they’re (Florida residents) going to get hammered, based on what weather experts are predicting,” Mehlhaff said. “We sent them off, told them to be safe.”
Sometimes mutual aid crews are requested in advance of a hurricane if it appears to be severe. Some parts of Florida are being evacuated in advance of Irma. The BPU crews are responding through the Kansas Mutual Aid for Utilities.
So many utility crews had already converged on Texas last week that the BPU was not needed in that emergency effort, according to Mehlhaff.
It is common for utilities to assist each other in times of emergencies, he added. Other states are also sending utility crews to Florida.
Other crews and contractors from Kansas came to Kansas City, Kansas, to assist after a storm this summer, he said, and during last summer’s big storm, crews came in to help from the Omaha area as a part of a mutual aid agreement among public utilities.
