Module 1- My first hard lesson.

It was approximately 15 years ago and I had been in the apprenticeship for a while and thought I was catching on quick and becoming quite the line hand. A storm rolled through that was big enough for the boss to make an “all call” and I got paired up with an older troubleman that was a couple years away from retirement. As the evening progressed we completed many “cut and run” or “make safe” outage tickets and received a ticket for a “tree on wire” outage. We arrived on scene and located the tree pinning the wire down to the ground. The troubleman must have seen the disappointed look on my face when he told me we were going to call for a tree crew. I mentioned I would like to turn at least one persons power back on before the storm was over so he gave in and said that we would take care of the tree ourselves instead of calling for a tree crew. He allowed me to help carry some of the equipment into the right of way then made me stand very far back out of harms away. He proceeded to very slowly and carefully cut away all the branches and the part of the trunk that was overhanging the line. Finally after cutting for what seemed like a better part of an hour he made one final cut which released the wires that were pinned down causing a piece of the tree that was probably 6 or 8 feet long to launch into the air. I stood wide eyed and in disbelief at the raw power of lines under tension. Thankfully he knew that I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was and kept me out of harms way or my story would have definitely turned out far worse. We became good friends in the years to come and I learned a lot from him before he retired.

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