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CLEMMONS — When Hurricanes Helene and Milton rocked the Southeast United States in late 2024, Clemmons and Lewisville lineworkers were ready to be deployed to areas throughout the region to assist.

When disasters hit areas around the nation, Duke Energy officials said they have no shortages of lineworkers lining up to help with relief efforts.

“Restoration (of electricity structures) happens all the time. It’s an everyday thing. We’ve had a restoration event today (on Monday). But we don’t always get to travel and have the camaraderie in a group like we do on a storm. It’s more like a team that is ganged up, travel together, eat together, sleep together,” said Duke Energy lineman Justin Grubbs, who assisted after both Helene and Milton. “That’s more of an experience. You come together way more on a storm than you do just everyday working with them.

“That’s one section. The restoration, being able to be part of a big event, saying that you helped out and going down there and getting the lights on, that’s No. 2.”

Chris Stone, a Duke Energy supervisor who assisted in Florida after Milton, said that the first responsibility after a large storm such as Helene is to ensure that the power is stable in the Lewisville-Clemmons area.

“Large events like that, we’ll get sent to them. But a lot of times, we’ll stay put temporarily to make sure that we keep the Lewisville-Clemmons area on, and then once we get the Lewisville-Clemmons area on, we’ll move on to another area, maybe Elkin, maybe Wilkesboro, maybe Greensboro-High Point. If it’s a broader storm than that, then we’ll do the Florida and the out-of-state stuff. Kind of got to keep the home fires burning first,” said Stone.

After that, Duke Energy deploys the lineworkers to disaster areas as needed. While those lineworkers are away, however, the company leaves behind a skeleton crew to answer any problems that come up during the relief weeks. Charlie Ferrell, one of the linemen left in Clemmons during the Helene efforts, said that that crew was working 80 to 90 hours of overtime in a week just to keep the lights on at home.

“We’re gone for three weeks and then we come back, and all that work that was here when we left. There was nobody here, we had a patchwork crew and Charlie worked himself to death. So, when we come back, there’s also a period where you’re put to the gas trying to get caught back up again,” said Stone.

Kerry Anthony was deployed to assist after Milton, but he went to Swannanoa as a volunteer to help with the clean-up efforts after Hurricane Helene. Anthony described the devastation in the area as if “a bomb went off.”

“It’s wiped out. We went into a condo, which was a two-story condo, the water was six feet up on the second floor. I’m 6’4”, and it was about as tall as I was. That’s hard to even imagine, and you got apartment buildings across the stream that were up on pillars, it was five buildings at one time and two of them got washed away while three of them were spared. It was up to the second floor of those apartments on stilts,” said Anthony.

Anthony was part of a group organized through Duke Energy and sent along with Baptists on Mission. Grubbs said that he knew he and many of the other lineworkers wanted to go along with Anthony’s group to volunteer, but that “there wasn’t room for everybody and it wasn’t smart to just keep jamming people up there.”

Following their efforts in the Hickory area and western North Carolina, many of the Clemmons and Lewisville lineworkers were asked to turn around and head to Florida to assist with getting the power turned back on after Hurricane Milton.

“I basically worked three different areas, just because that’s where I was assigned to go, which was kind of unusual. All the devastation was in (western N.C.), and some guys worked there from start to finish. I got assigned kind of to the foothills, and then we went to upstate South Carolina, work a little bit, and then we ended up going to Florida. We got one or two days back in order to pack up and then turn around and go right back,” said Grubbs.

Throughout those relief efforts, all of the linemen said that they were sleeping in their trucks while the areas were flooded before sleeping in hotels, gyms and auditoriums that were still damaged and without power.

“You do what you have to do,” said Stone.

The four lineworkers could lay out a long list of places that they have responded to with their disaster relief efforts, including Detroit; Lake Charles, Louisiana; New York after Hurricane Sandy; and Charleston, South Carolina after Hurricane Hugo.

“They’re out just like anybody else. I don’t care if it is wading through water or what,” said Grubbs, recounting a story where they had to wade through water with sewage in it in Florida to restore power to two people.

They called around, got chest-waders, and had one of them strapped up and going through the water while they had two booms overhead helping him navigate through the water.

“We took pride in the job and did it when others wouldn’t,” said Stone.