Oakland Company On The Front Lines Of Storm Work

Oakland-based Grays Power Supply has hundreds of workers in Louisiana helping with the restoration effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura. As of Monday, over 300,000 people in the affected areas were still without electricity.

SULPHUR, La. – A Yalobusha County company is on the front lines of the recovery effort in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura after hundreds of workers from Oakland-based Grays Power Supply headed to the Gulf Coast last Monday, Aug. 24.
The workers arrived in Gulfport that night as hundreds of thousands of residents across Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana  and Texas braced for the one-two punch expected from hurricanes Marco and Laura.
“We first went down to help on the Mississippi coast but Marco missed,” company owner Michael Gray told the Herald Monday afternoon. After the crews spent that first night in Gulfport, they headed west to Houston, Texas and watched as Laura continued to gain strength out in the Gulf.  By early Thursday morning the fast-moving storm pounded the western Louisiana coastline near the Texas-Louisiana border and Gray said his crews were soon headed to Sulphur, La. to start rebuilding the downed power lines and poles.
“We had a convoy of about 50 trucks driving around 25 miles per hour. We drove through flooded areas and had to stop and cut trees off the roads,” Gray explained.

Grays Power Supply is a full service electrical contracting and maintenance company with contracts in Mississippi and across the country. Owner Michael Gray is pictured working in Water Valley in 2018, when he provided three crews to assist the Water Valley Electric Department with the replacement of power poles in the city during a scheduled outage.

Gray calls it storm chasing and for the last dozen years since He launched Grays Power Supply, he has sent crews to repair downed lines and poles in the aftermath of hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. From the first storm, back in 2010, when Hurricane Earl brushed Massachusetts, Gray has seen the familiar devastation many times during the last decade after major hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast and Atlantic coast.
“But this is the worst storm I have ever seen on the Gulf Coast,” Gray said about the damage.
Gray’s report came as he was working with crews in Sulphur about 20 miles from ground zero where the hurricane came ashore, but with almost 400 workers he explained that his crews were scattered from Shreveport to Lake Charles to Alexandria.
In the days leading up to the storm, Gray said they made sure all of the equipment was serviced and ready. He called in past employees for help and hired over 30 new workers for the job.
“We have a lot of our own in-house guys and a lot of equipment,” Gray explained. His manpower also includes crews subcontracted from other companies he routinely works with.
“We bought in people from as far as Spokane, Washington, and Beaumont, Texas,” Gray added.
On this trip his company is working for Entergy as an estimated 360,000 customers across the area were still without power Monday afternoon. Entergy, which provides power to people in both Texas and Louisiana, reported that the damage to its high-voltage transmission lines and other key infrastructure is some of the most severe the company has ever experienced.

Tough Working  Conditions
When the linemen leave out for storm duty, they know there are long stretches ahead with 16-hour days and sparse accommodations.
“Our first night down here, we rented a hotel with no lights or water. There were no beds, they were all up on the second floor. We set everything up as best we could,” Gray said.
In the days that followed they have stayed in 18-wheeler trailers set up with bunks.
“We try to knock off at least eight hours a day, but truthfully these guys are running on about four hours sleep,” Gray said, explaining one of the biggest dangers they face is fatigue. “We have four woman working with us and they are toughing it out, just like the guys.”
The military style camps where the workers bunk means extremely close quarters, and Gray said that COVID-19 is another threat.
“We have to take a lot more special precautions, wearing masks and trying to maintain six feet of distance, but that is difficult in these conditions,” Gray said. So far, no workers have been sickened by the virus. He credits some of this to the healthy workforce, many who are younger. But he also utilizes retired linemen who worked careers for Entergy or other companies who are often older.
The restoration is slow work after the strong winds snapped poles and trees and debris often covers the tangled mess.
“We go back and fix the poles and then put the wire on the poles, it is not an easy process,” Gray continued. In Sulphur, his crews are mainly working on primary lines, but the main transmission line that powers the community is also down and other crews are working to get it energized.  The hazardous working conditions also include the danger of electricity back feeding from generators not hooked up properly at people’s houses. Gray explained this can cause power to feed from the main breaker at a house to nearby transformer, which then converts it back to thousands of volts and attempts to energize utility lines in the vicinity.
“We take precautions including grounding the lines at several different places,” Gray said about the safety measures. He anticipates the crews will work for at least the next three weeks in Louisiana.
“Before this, we just came off another hurricane job up in New York,” he said.

The Reward
The hard work is worthwhile, as Gray said after putting in long days, when the power is restored people are very appreciative.
“There is no better feeling than helping people,” he added. He also appreciates the strong bond as people in the communities come together to help one another.
“With meat going bad in freezers, they have cookouts and provide meals for complete strangers. You got the scavengers down here, but most people are good,” he noted.