PADUCAH, Ky. -- A Western Kentucky electric crew is helping restore power in Florida in the wake of a major hurricane that left more than 100,000 customers out of power.
Six crew members from Paducah Power System packed up tools and materials on Tuesday morning and headed to the Tallahassee area to assist other power companies to restore electric to thousands of homes and businesses.
Hurricane Idalia made landfall as a Category 3 storm, wreaking havoc in Taylor, Lafayette, Suwannee Counties, along with the surrounding area.
Power crews worked around the clock to restore power to customers as quickly as possible.
Paducah Power System Director of Human Resources and Community Relations Andrea Underwood said their crew members went down to assist because it's important to help each other out in times of need.
Underwood said the crew members will see a lot of lines down but it's mostly just helping other utility companies with basic restoration efforts.
"So the process when you help another utility is they usually have someone from their utility who is familiar with their system that helps you. They call them 'birddogs,'" Underwood said. "They're there to help you look out for some of the dangers there, within a system, that you're unfamiliar with."
She said it's important to help our neighbors as they have helped us here locally in past events.
"We know how important the help is when we need it," Underwood said. "For those who were here during the 2009 ice storm, they will remember the outside crews who restored power to all the people in this area. We know how wonderful that felt to see those crews roll into town and helped you feel like recovery was achievable. It gave you hope and it was important support when you needed it most."
Underwood said a power outage can really be detrimental to people, not just as an inconvenience, as electric powers many necessities people use everyday.
"Yeah it really doesn't take long for our power to be out before we really start to remember how the use of power permeates just about everything we do and how important it is in our day-to-day lives," Underwood said. "Sometimes, people depend on it for their survival for medical equipment."
Underwood said their crew is expected to come back in about two days.
As of Thursday at 3 p.m., there were roughly 90,000 customers still out of power in Florida.
