mutual aid

A group of lineworkers having a team meeting

Gusts, grit, and the power of cooperation

Appropriately, spring’s swift, early arrival in Ohio this year came on a Friday the 13th. A fast‑moving low‑pressure system tore across the state this past March, unleashing widespread damaging winds.

11:52 a.m., March 13: Trouble begins

In Millersburg, in eastern Ohio, reports of outages started coming in to Holmes‑Wayne Electric Cooperative around noon. “The numbers escalated quickly through the afternoon,” says Robyn Tate, the co-op’s vice president and chief administrative officer, noting that the hardest-hit areas were also the most rural. Large trees came down and numerous poles snapped under their weight. 

Power Lines
Destruction left by a hurricane

After hurricanes

A little more than six months after Hurricane Helene rampaged through the southeastern United States, it’s become apparent that some hard-hit areas will take months or years to recover — if they ever do. 

Helene was the costliest — and one of the deadliest — storms ever to hit the United States. It came ashore in Florida in the overnight hours of Sept. 25, 2024, and dissipated only three days later near the Tennessee-Kentucky border. But in that short span, it had damaged hundreds of water and sewer systems, destroyed long stretches of entire roads, washed out countless bridges, and mangled or swept away hundreds of thousands of homes. 

Power Lines
Hurricane doppler

A reminder from Mother Nature

Every so often, we are reminded of the raw power of — and our relative helplessness against — the forces of nature. Throughout Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, communities are still coming to grips with the devastation wrought in late September and early October by the one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton, two of the more powerful and damaging storms of the past few decades. 

The utter destruction there is difficult to fathom. Recovery will take months, and even years in some communities.

Up Front
Less than 36 hours after Hurricane Helene made landfall late on Sept. 26, an initial force of 40 lineworkers from 11 Ohio co-ops headed south.

Disaster response

When electric cooperatives in North Carolina and South Carolina put out the call for help after Hurricane Helene barreled through in late September, Ohio answered. 

When the Ohio group reached the Carolinas, what they found was shocking. In the western parts of those two states, Helene had left a mutilated landscape in its wake. Roads, bridges, power systems — in some places, even entire villages — had been washed entirely off Appalachian hillsides and into flooded valleys. Damage was widespread, and it was devastating.

Power Lines
Downed trees and power lines

Helping Hands

As Father’s Day approached this past June, so did a weather pattern that brought with it a series of storms across Ohio. The storms appeared initially to be strong, to be sure, but not out of line with the usual tempests that sweep through the Midwest every summer.

As the co-ops organized resources to restore the systems to turn power back on to their members, the next several days brought alternating extreme heat and additional powerful storm systems that made the work of restoring service both more dangerous and more plentiful. Problems on AEP’s high-voltage transmission network resulted in more than 100,000 central Ohio homes and businesses having their power intentionally shut off for long stretches of time.

Power Lines
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