We didn't see a single power company truck working by our area for about a week, which led to a lot of people wondering where the heck they were. However, there was about 7 trucks working at the substation nearby. Not sure how all that works, but it definitely seemed like they had to fix that substation before they could even think about working on the lines heading to various neighborhoods. Our area was one of the last places to get power in town. We're on a dead end side street that needed to have three poles replaced.
I suspect most of the folks in this Forum are familiar with the triage system for restoring electricity, but here is how they do it in the PNW, courtesy of Puget Sound Energy's website:
http://pse.com/aboutpse/PseNewsroom/MediaKit/3813_how_power_gets_restored.pdfMy experience has been, the more you begin to see power crews out and servicing your neighborhood electrical lines, the better the offers of food and water etc to the crews doing the work. They're typically on shifts of 12-16 hours on and 12-8 hours off, and coming from places like Wyoming and Kansas to restore power. They really bust their butts, and occasionally one or a few of them die doing this work. After 9 days without power we offered warm food and hot drinks, and they strung the power line to our house that was literally the last 200 ft of line in our zip code - plus they fixed the metal pipe on our roof that the line runs into, which is usually another step that you have to contact a local electrician to do.
Fire fighters, cops, and linemen for the county - three of the best professions if you ask me.
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