Cooperation among cooperatives: Farmers Electric sends linemen to help Helene survivors

One of the guiding principles of cooperatives is cooperation among cooperatives. That’s a lot of cooperating.

Recently, this principle played out through the hands and hearts of two linemen from Farmers Electric Cooperative, based in Greenfield, who traveled by themselves in a basket truck to Lexington, South Carolina, to help the local cooperative there recover as quickly as possible from Hurricane Helene.

Ross Wright and Mike Auten left Monday, Sept. 30 on this mission and returned Wednesday, Oct. 9.

Wright left in Iowa his wife, Jessica, and three kids — Harper, 12; Hallee, 10; and Huxley, 5 — while Auten left behind his girlfriend, Bella.

The one-way drive to South Carolina was 18 hours in length, by way of St. Louis, Nashville and Atlanta.

“I’ve helped with numerous storms within the state of Iowa, just not out of the state,” said Wright, a 16-year employee of Farmers Electric. Auten, who has worked there for two years, hadn’t ever helped on a hurricane mission either.

On a normal day, linemen work 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in a territory that includes all or some of Adair, Audubon, Cass, Guthrie, Madison and Union counties. Employees arrive, get trucks and supplies ready, receive orders from foremen on the jobs for the day, and then depart to complete those tasks. Every day is vastly different from another.

Founded and formed in 1938, Farmers Electric’s basic philosophy is to provide the best possible service at the lowest cost consistent with sound economics and good management. As a not-for-profit utility, it’s organized, owned and governed by its members.

Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative — home to over 47,000 member-owners — had over 450 poles broken off by Helene, which made landfall late evening Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of 130-156 mph.

“They have a lot more area than we do and a lot more people,” Wright said. “They said it impacted over 95% of their system. When we left, there was only one meter still off, but when we got to our hotel, they had it back on.”

Auten noticed the South Carolinian landscape was a lot different than Iowa.

“There were a lot more trees. When it came to digging holes to set poles, some of the area was red dirt, while some of it was sand, which was a struggle because once you dig holes it would cave in a lot easier,” Auten said. “Their poles are different than ours. They’re stiff and hard holes, so when their poles would break and fall over, it would break into two or three pieces. When ours fall over they kind of stay together and string apart where they break.”

Most of the damage these linemen witnessed was downed trees, which understandably impacted electrical service to many. Work they did included resetting poles and re-stringing power lines.

One of the places the linemen stopped in Georgia was still without power on their way home, so they were unable to refuel, which illustrates the multi-faceted impact of a store of Helene’s scope.

“You could tell people were scrambling in that town,” Auten said.

Wright mentioned he thought the damage crews faced helping recover from Milton, which hit the southeast shortly after Helene, was different, as a lot more line needed to be replaced there. Either way, he was thankful he and Auten were able to go help.

“Everybody down there was extremely nice. We never ran into any disgruntled customers,” Wright said. “That first day, we had two to three people stop and give us food and drinks, just random people.”

Auten said there was one way he and Wright were able to see the fruit of their labor on this trip.

“We got to get services back up and watch the lights go back on,” Auten said. “People had been out of power for a couple days and you could see [the customers] waiting [for it to come back on]. They were pretty excited to see us.”

Farmers Electric CEO Holi Weston was proud of the efforts these two linemen were able to give to an area that needed it very much.

“It always feels good to send guys to help other cooperatives. One of our cooperative principles is cooperation among cooperatives, so to be able to see that principle play out is pretty amazing,” Weston said. “We’ve received help before too, like when the derecho hit a few years ago, or this summer with the tornado. It always feels much better to help people than to need help.”