Local men head to areas with storm damage

Six Pike County men left for Pearl River Valley in Mississippi Wednesday morning to help areas hit hard by Hurricane Isaac.

“We’re proud of our linemen,” said Max Davis, general manager of the South Alabama Electric Cooperative. “They are willing to step up and assist other cooperatives when storms like this come ashore.”

Tuesday, employees and staff at SAEC were already hard at work making a plan to aid neighboring cooperatives in Isaac’s path.

“We dodged a bullet with this storm,” Davis said. “If the storm had followed some of the earlier projected paths, it could have been us waking up to outages and downed lines this morning.”

Crew members who left for Mississippi include Pike County residents David Sunday, construction foreman; Regal Hamm, Class A lineman; Blane Senn, Class A lineman; Jeff Wilkerson, Class A lineman; Jay Adair, Class A lineman; and Jonathan Issac, Class B lineman.

The men will be working with the Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association in Columbia, Miss where the EPA serves 47,000 meters in 12 counties and maintains 6,700 miles of line.