lineworkers

The work of electric cooperatives is interesting, challenging, meaningful, and rewarding. Yet it’s not for everyone. We work hard to bring together a group of people with the skills and personal attributes necessary to fulfill our obligation to the communities we serve: to provide safe, reliable, cost-competitive, and environmentally responsible electric service to every member, every day. This requires a broad range of job skills, from accounting and engineering to construction and maintenance.  

“Our guys are really good about making sure they answer everyone’s questions, and they’ll stick around as long as they need to,” says Candi Fisher, member engagement coordinator at South Central Power, who coordinates the mobile safety demonstrations for the co-op. “They could tell this older gentleman wanted to talk to them and so they went over to say hello.”

“You saved my life,” the man said. 

“That’s not something you hear every day,” Fisher says. “But he was very insistent. He made a special trip there that day to thank the guys who had saved his life.”

Salmons picked up the hobby about 17 years ago after visiting a local fish and game club, and quickly found it got his competitive juices flowing. Competitors walk through the woods, stopping at stations where they take aim at clay “birds” — targets mechanically thrown into the air.

Each competitor shoots 50 targets, keeping score and trying to improve over time. 

“In June, we were working 16 hours a day in 90-degree weather, for about a week,” says Wise, 22. “Then winter storm Elliott hit (in December) and we worked a lot of overtime when it was minus 30. We’ve seen the hottest of the hot and the coldest of the cold.”

“Sure, I want to be home,” Wise says. “But there are people out there who don’t have power and if we’re not out there doing this, then who is?”

Electric cooperatives make substantial investments in the communities we serve, from the power plants that send power across the grid to your local co-op to the poles, wires, transformers, and meters that generally blend into the local landscape. These are all expensive and long-lived physical assets necessary to make your lights come on day in and day out. 

ExploreAg is Ohio Farm Bureau’s signature agricultural literacy and workforce development program. The majority of its offerings, which are free, are week- and weekend-long immersion camps for high school students. Teens get a broad-spectrum look at agriculture and related STEM fields, develop their leadership and collaboration skills, and prepare for college and/or a career.

When asked if he couldn’t just drop it off at a local garage and have them repair it, the veteran racer laughs. 

“No, this is the fun part,” he says. “At least most of the time, so long as you get to run them every now and then. I just enjoy building this stuff.”

More than 40 Ohio lineworkers spent a good chunk of January in Virginia, helping to restore power to more than 80,000 co-op members after a storm there. Then in early February, 63 lineworkers from 20 cooperatives around the state jumped into action to help restore power to more than 30,000 Ohio co-op members when winter storm Landon put a coating of ice over some of the most difficult-to-reach areas of the southern part of the state. 

It’s easy to take the luxury and convenience of electricity for granted. It’s invisible and so reliably available that we seldom give it a second thought. Even after the devastation of those southern Ohio ice storms, we took comfort in knowing that once our workers got the lines restored, those lights would go right back on, thanks to a reliable source of electricity.

In the wee morning hours of Aug. 28, 2019, a line crew from Lancaster-based South Central Power Company was called to address a power hazard along State Route 73 near Hillsboro. An Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper guarded the zone while the crew established a new traffic path for drivers, setting cones and putting caution lights in place. As the linemen were about to begin work, the trooper confirmed that the work site met construction zone safety standards and headed out.