Alliant, MidAmerican workers go to help after Hurricane Helene

Iowa utilities Alliant Energy and MidAmerican Energy have sent scores of workers to states hit hard by Hurricane Helene to help restore power.

About 150 Alliant and 70 MidAmerican line workers and crew members were sent to Virginia and Ohio, respectively, to help energy companies there restore customers’ power that was knocked out by the severe storm.

Cindy Tomlinson, manager of external communications for Alliant, said out of the 150 employees deployed, 90 are from Iowa and 60 are from Wisconsin. She said the workers left Sunday morning for Virginia.

They will be assisting American Electric Power’s Appalachian Power for “one to two weeks,” Tomlinson said. The crews will be helping in the Virginia cities of Lebanon, Richlands and Woodlawn, in the southwest corner of the state.

“This voluntary partnership stems from the Edison Electric Institute mutual assistance program,” Tomlinson said in a statement to The Gazette. “It’s a voluntary partnership of investor-owned electric companies across the country who are committed to helping restore power whenever and wherever assistance is needed — it’s is a cornerstone of the industry.”

Tomlinson said whether the crews will be in Virginia longer than two weeks or move to other locations has not been determined.

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Duke Energy, which serves 8.4 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, requested help Friday night after remnants of Hurricane Helene continued to pummel the Ohio region.

Geoff Greenwood, media relations manager for MidAmerican, said its crew arrived late Saturday in Ohio, where Duke Energy assigned MidAmerican employees to support restoration efforts in Hamilton, Ohio, which is a northern suburb of Cincinnati.

“We don’t yet know when our team will return or what may be in store for them after today,” Greenwood said.

There were about 140,000 customers without power in that area during the storm peak Friday night, Greenwood said. The “crews have made, and continue to make, a lot of progress,” he said. “Their storm restoration tasks could be anything from repairing downed or broken lines and components to replacing them, including removing and replacing broken poles.”

Greenwood said MidAmerican’s storm response team is working 12-hour days.

"We're proud that our crews were willing to take time away from their families to aid customers in another state who lost a vital service," Nick Nation, MidAmerican senior vice president for delivery, said in a company statement. "We know from experience that when you're hit by a major natural disaster, it's really important to get extra resources rapidly from other utilities. I'm confident our team will do its level best to restore customers as quickly and as safely as they can."

As of Monday, nearly 2 million customers were without power across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia, according to the U.S. power outage database. Out of those seven states, South Carolina has the most power outages statewide.

Helene hit the United States in Florida’s Big Bend area as a Category 4 hurricane, marking the third hurricane to hit the region in 13 months.

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; olivia.cohen@thegazette.com