Walking up to the Georgia Power Transmission Construction Crews, I felt more than a little nostalgia. Having left this fine company 14 years ago, I was back again, sporting the vintage-yellow Georgia Power hardhat that invoked so many memories for me. When I walked up and announced that I was with Transmission & Distribution World, I was greeted with puzzled looks from all but one guy, who said, “Hi, Rick. It's me, Graham.”

This is definitely a small world, as Graham Smith is one of the young-gun Georgia Power engineers I had written about previously (“Handing Over the Car Keys,” May 2005) who could make the PLS-CADD transmission line design software sing. Graham had worked Hurricane Katrina for Gulf Power and was now here on Galveston Island, Texas, working Ike.

Georgia Power also sent a battalion of distribution crews to work the three-phase feeder lines on the island, and brought along Pike Electric crews for the job, as well. Quanta, a CenterPoint strategic partner, also had crews in abundance on Galveston Island.

I asked Graham how the work was progressing, and he gave me some insane statistics. “In a day and a half, we replaced 9 transmission poles and straightened 157, and we replaced 20 distribution poles and straightened 98.” Graham told me that several poles were leaning 45 degrees. Because the transmission crews have the big equipment, they focused on the poles and left the conductor and insulator work to the distribution crews coming behind them.

Robert “Cricket” Hickson, a transmission construction supervisor with Georgia Power, was telling me a little detail about the “swim” required to retrieve one transmission line pole that had broken off entirely and had sunk to the bottom of the canal on the side of a roadway. Graham joined in, “I volunteered to go in and put a strap around the pole so the line truck could pull it out of the water, but Biscuit and Red beat me to it.”

I walked up to where the Georgia Power crew was straightening up the next pole and saw the name “Biscuit” on one of the linemen's hardhats. Lineman Raymond “Biscuit” Bernard told me how he and apprentice lineman Brandon “Red” Boatwright waded neck deep into the water to secure the submerged pole. Cricket took the plunge to the bottom of the canal and burrowed his hand underneath the pole to get the strap under the pole. They both secured the line to the winch-truck cable, and operator Patrick Pittman lifted the pole out of the water and laid it down parallel to the road.

I mentioned to Graham that I had two nicknames when I was at Georgia Power, and the repeatable one was “Tippy Toes.” I asked Graham his nickname, and he said, “I don't have one, but all the way driving here from Georgia I was being teased for calling expressways freeways, so I am pushing for the nickname ‘Freeway.’”

I told Graham, “I just might be able to help you get that nickname to stick.” I wouldn't want Graham saddled with a nickname I couldn't put in print.

For more on the Hurricane Ike recovery efforts, go to www.tdworld.com and check out our blog (http://blog.tdworld.com/ike/)