Before anyone starts throwing rocks, this is an editorial hence the word “Opinion” in the title.  I awoke this morning at 6:30 with the awful realization that I was NOT going to have my much needed morning coffee. The power was off.  I had no idea how much wind we got from the overnight remnants of hurricane Zeta.

It was daybreak and I took the dog out for a walk in the front yard thinking the electricity would certainly be back on at least within the hour.  No doubt the lines were down ‘somewhere’ causing the outage. I was certain the VEC crews were out somewhere repairing a transformer.  I looked on the VEC outage map and it showed 300 customers were without power in Cumberland County.

I was about to call in to report my outage when I notice Okie (that’s my little dog’s name) was walking over a long black cable laying across my driveway.  It suddenly hit me “oh no, that may be a live wire on the ground”.  I quickly gathered up the dog and put her in the house before she ended up a snuffed-out-schnauzer.  It wasn’t a live wire but instead was a telephone cable laying across my front yard.  I looked up and three of the four high voltage electric wires which run across my property…were gone.  Now I knew why my power was out.  The center of the problem was right in my front yard. A tree in my side yard had fallen earlier and took down the three lines with it. It wasn’t long before a VEC utility truck passed by my house.  I ran toward the road to flag them down and point to the problem which had the whole neighborhood without lights. The VEC crew backed their big bucket truck up to my garage and rose to the top of the power pole. I thought it would probably take the rest of the day to re-run the three power lines and get electricity going.  I sat on my porch and watched the two men at work.

It didn’t take me long to realize those guys are ‘experts’ at their craft. I was fascinated at their skillful maneuvers to get those high tension wires back up in the air and spliced together. The two men worked in perfect coordination to get the power lines lifted off the ground and connected

I gained a whole new respect for the VEC workers this morning as I watched them put in a diligent effort to restore power to the customers in my neighborhood. Every move carefully executed as they performed some very dangerous feats.  It was clear these workers had been through some very thorough training and knew exactly what they were doing.  What I had projected to take many hours to repair took only one hour – and I had my coffee brewing.  This wasn’t even the worse condition they must brave to get the power back on.  I thought back to the massive ice storm of 2015 and how so many men were out risking their lives in treacherous weather conditions to restore power that was dead all over the county.

I miss my good friend Bobby Randolph who was always a phone call away when I needed a power outage update to report in the news. As manager of VEC, Bobby would tell me many stories of how his crews always performed at top level in quickly getting the power back on. I thought this morning how we seem to take for granted the electricity staying up and running to help run our daily lives. This was the first time I sat and witnessed the entire process of the VEC crews first locating the interruption, then working expeditiously repairing the problem.  It was something to watch.  I appreciate their quick response and understand more fully the daunting task of making sure wires carrying thousands of volts to households stay together and keep the juice flowing. Yes, my coffee tasted a little better than usual this morning.