Lineworkers at Mt. Pleasant Utilities work rain or shine to get the power back on

When residents in southwest Mt. Pleasant experienced power outages Sunday night, June 30, Bryan Ham and Kamron Roberts, lineworkers with Mt. Pleasant Municipal Utilities, were dispatched to locate the problem on the southwest side of town and get the power up and running as quickly as possible.

They located the problem on South Hoaglin Drive, where a couple of large trees had fallen on power lines, most likely uprooted from a windstorm earlier in the weekend. For three hours Sunday night they worked to get the power back on for residents before returning to the job site on Monday, July 1, to finish the job. Late Monday morning, they waited for Maddy Tree Service to remove the trees before they began repairing the line.

Roberts is just finishing up his second year at Mt. Pleasant Utilities. He is one of three other family members who chose to work in the line industry. They all enjoy working with their hands in the outdoors. It's rewarding, Roberts said.

Working with electricity is 'humbling,” Roberts said. If you mess up, you can get injured. So he stays focused, gets the lines back on the poles and off the ground.

'You have to pay attention at all times,” Roberts said. 'You put a lot of trust in your co-workers.”

Ham has worked for Mt. Pleasant Utilities for 15 years. He graduated from line school at Northwest Iowa Community College, a profession he decided to pursue because he likes working with his hands.

'Also, it's a good living. There's good money in it,” Ham said.

The most challenging part of the job is not dying, Ham said with a grin.

'People take electricity for granted,” Ham said. 'They expect to have the power back on right away, but it takes time.”

The majority of outages Mt. Pleasant Utilities is called out to fix are caused by squirrels, said Greg Thu, electric supervisor at Mt. Pleasant Utilities. They get on top of a transformer and blow a fuse.

Other problems are mostly caused by severe thunderstorms and high winds. They knock down trees, tear down wires and break poles. That's when Thu gets called out to work during the day, in the evenings or on the weekends - whenever a problem arises - to find the problem, dispatch other lineworkers and get residents' electricity up and running again as quickly as possible.

'There's an adrenaline rush to it,” Thu said. 'Although you do not want the outages, when a big one happens, it's somewhat exciting.

'At 1 or 1 a.m., you've got to put your breeches on and go to work,” Thu said.

A couple bigger projects Mt. Pleasant Utilities has been working on lately is putting in an underground line from the park substation to the Henry County Health Center and getting Robin Run, which will be a community of manufactured houses in Mt. Pleasant, hooked up to Mt. Pleasant Utilities.

The project for the hospital will make their service more reliable, Thu said. Some of their equipment is pretty sensitive and if a windstorm 'blinks” their lights, it needs to be reset.

'They wanted a better system. That's what we're doing right now,” Thu said.

Thu started as a lineworker in 1977. As a high school student in Graettinger, he was planning on going to college to be an accountant when a lineworker spoke at his school.

'After I listened to him, I decided that was what I was going to do,” Thu said, who has been working as a lineman for almost 38 years. 'People don't like to live without their electricity. It's just a feeling of accomplishment to go out there and restore their power.”

Working as a lineworker can be a dangerous job. The lineworker who sparked Thu's interest in the profession was electrocuted once. Thu said if he hadn't survived, Thu would have gotten out of the business.

'It is dangerous,” Thu said. 'You have to pay attention to what you're doing. You're out there working in all sorts of weather, whether a blizzard or a thunderstorm. When the power is out, you've got to go to work. That's when people want power the most is when the weather is bad.”

On the job, lineworkers wear rubber gloves and sleeves, hard hats, safety harnesses and fire-retardant clothing.

Not only are they dealing with live wires, they have to climb utility poles and go up in bucket trucks to work on the lines.

Thu said bucket trucks can be hit by vehicles, and if a lineworker isn't tied into the bucket they can be thrown out.

Residents driving past a utility truck need to leave them plenty of room and watch for other lineworkers on the ground around the truck, Thu said.

Training is important. Thu himself is on the electric safety committee for the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities (IAMU). At IAMU, they offer educational opportunities to train younger lineworkers getting started in the profession.

'Small towns especially hire local people who may not know what they're doing. (Line school) gets them so they can go home safely,” Thu said.

Line work is a good paying job, Thu said. He knows there is a waiting list for many line schools. Even so, schools seem more interested in teaching students how to use computers.

'There still have to be people who want to go out and do the physical work,” Thu said. 'I think there's a lot of people going into (line work) still.”

Despite the dangers of the job, Thu said being a lineworker has been a very rewarding career.

'Once I got into it, I didn't want to do anything else,” Thu said. 'If I had to do it all over again, I'd do the same thing.”