HOUSTON – The saying “It takes an army to build something great” couldn’t be a better fit for the work being done to strengthen the CenterPoint Energy infrastructure.
Houston’s utility company has amassed an army of workers to help make their grid more resistant to a massive outage.
In the wake of the May derecho and then Hurricane Beryl, CenterPoint took two hits to the chin when it came to managing the power restoration process.
Now, partly due to an order from Governor Greg Abbott, thousands of men and women are working non-stop to strengthen the electrical distribution system that brings power to your house.
It’s part of a big plan the company put together in response to their sub-par response to Hurricane Beryl.
They really wanted to focus on three big things: installing better poles, trimming vegetation and installing automated systems to help prevent outages.
They set some lofty goals and are already on track to meet them.
CenterPoint Energy invited KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding to tag along with their blue-collar frontline workers making these goals possible.
The morning starts before the sun even rises. Crews dispatching from their command sites to arrive at our first site in Magnolia by 6:40 a.m.
Their job here is to remove old wooden poles and replace them with new fiberglass poles.
“I did that for two years,” said Cody Preuss, the Training Supervisor at CenterPoint Energy.
He’s been with the company since 1998. Preuss is a walking, living, breathing example of how hard work can pay off.
Starting off as a bottom-of-the-totem pool guy, he worked his way up the pole, literally, to know be the one responsible for training young men and women to become journeymen.
“I had a love for safety and technical training,” he said. “I really wanted to get to where the teaching process was at. I felt like I had a need for that.”
He’s seen the safe, unsafe and every other challenge the guys and gals in the field face on a daily basis.
Cody Preuss: “You name it, it can happen.”
Gage Goulding: “Installing a new power pole, it sounds like it’s easy. Dig a hole, put it in there and put the lines on it. But it’s not all that cut and dry?”
Cody Preuss: “Well no it’s not. What they don’t see is bad animals, yards, bad yards, trees and vegetation that’s in the way.”
On top of that, it’s hot. Really hot.
Cody Preuss: “Feels like 100 plus.”
Gage Goulding: “It almost seems miserable out here working.”
Cody Preuss: “It can get miserable. Yes.”
Preuss, like many of the blue-collar workers, lost power during both Hurricane Beryl and the derecho.
They left their families and their homes to come turn power back on at yours.
Gage Goulding: “It seems like it takes a special caliber of person to do this job.”
Cody Preuss: “Definitely does. It definitely does.”
While we were talking, the crew got the pole place in the ground and it was time to move along to check on the teams cutting back vegetation.
“Workers like this are a very unique breed,” said Gary O’Neil, a forester with CenterPoint Energy.
That’s no joke. High up in a little bucket, dancing around 35,000-volt lines and top it off with feel-like temperatures flirting with 100 degrees.
“They actually thrive on working near power lines, maybe in high-risk situations,” O’Neil said.
Everything these crews are doing is risky. Up there in the trucks and down on the ground.
Gary O’Neil: “If you’re the person on the ground, you need to stay out of the work zone.”
Gage Goulding: “Do you find that the community is grateful that they’re thanking you for what you’re doing.”
Gary O’Neil: “People are welcoming us many times, bringing up Gatorade and cookies for the tree crews.”
It’s not all tough. There are rewarding parts of being a lineworker, like restoring power to millions of people.
But before you get there, you have to conquer what could be the toughest obstacle of all: heights.
Lineworkers power up and down poles all day, whether it’s the old-fashioned way or up in a bucket truck.
Cody Preuss: “It is a mental thing.”
Gage Goulding: “Do you ever get scared when the bucket starts shaking around when you stop?”
Cody Preuss: “I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t like this when I first started, I didn’t.”
Maybe you get used to it. Maybe you don’t.
But it’s helping their neighbors, their city, that keeps these lineworkers climbing.
It’s a very rewarding career to be in,” Preuss said. “And it has been I’ve loved every minute of it.”