September 28, 2004
Utility’s crews will help in massive power-restoration effort.
ROSEMEAD, Calif., Sept. 28, 2004—With much of Florida still without power and reeling from the fourth hurricane to devastate the state in less than two months, Southern California Edison (SCE) is helping, sending a contingent of field construction employees, 19 vehicles, and support staff to help with Florida’s power restoration efforts, which are expected to go on for weeks.
The SCE employees sent will include 30 field construction workers and additional support personnel. The vehicles will include large line-construction trucks and the smaller troubleman trucks.
SCE’s assistance comes in answer to a request by Florida Power & Light (FPL), whose own crews have been battling wide-spread devastation for weeks. The SCE crews and their equipment will arrive in Florida later this week and are expected to spend two weeks there.
SCE’s crews will replace or repair poles, crossarms, transformers, and other pieces of FPL’s high-voltage electrical infrastructure. The employees chosen for the Florida work will come from across SCE’s 50,000-square-mile service area so that no single region will be short of staff.
“Even though we’re on the other side of the country, we’re very concerned about the situation in Florida,” said Dick Rosenblum, SCE senior vice president for transmission and distribution. “Many of us have friends and family living in Florida, and we want to see everyone there get their power back on as quickly and as safely as possible.”
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An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of more than 13 million via 4.6 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within central, coastal and Southern California.
