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Sussex Rural crews to assist in Irma recovery

| 13 Sep 2017 | 12:21
    Five Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative crewmembers headed to Georgia to assist in Hurricane Irma recovery.
    Five Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative crewmembers headed to Georgia to assist in Hurricane Irma recovery.
    The area in red shows states most heavily affected by Hurricane Irma.
    The area in red shows states most heavily affected by Hurricane Irma.
    The five crewmembers are shown in front of the Sussex Rural building.
    The five crewmembers are shown in front of the Sussex Rural building.

SUSSEX — Five linemen from Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative (SREC) headed south Tuesday morning to assist in recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
The SREC crews in a bucket truck and a digger truck for the 800-mile trip. On their journey, they will join 51 fellow linemen with three digger trucks and 20 bucket trucks from 13 of the 14 Pennsylvania/New Jersey Cooperatives providing assistance to Jackson EMC in Jefferson, Georgia, the largest electric cooperative in the state.
“Mutual Aid agreements are a significant and distinctive tool that cooperatives employ to offer assistance to each other,” says Chris Reese, SREC President and CEO. "SREC is proud of the willingness and effort demonstrated by our employees that stepped up to assist our co-op friends in the South.”
Chuck Pike, SREC Director of Engineering & Operations, said the linemen are proud to work the storms “in the same spirit of cooperation that cooperatives from Florida and South Carolina came to our assistance to aid our members in their time of need in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.”
SREC is preparing for the likelihood that, after work is completed at Jackson EMC, the PA/NJ crews could be requested to provide mutual assistance to cooperatives located further south in either Georgia or Florida.
Electric cooperatives, like Sussex Rural Electric, have a unique and effective approach to emergency management and disaster recovery: mutual assistance.
Following a disaster, co-ops will rapidly deploy support staff and equipment to emergency and recovery zones to assist other co-ops. Since cooperatives are not-for-profit organizations, they are eligible for financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which can fund a major portion of the cost of emergency work to restore power and the cost of repairing, restoring, rebuilding or replacing damaged facilities. This system gives electric cooperatives the ability to respond effectively and quickly in times of crisis and protects the financial interests of the cooperative members at the same time.