Davey Tree Flipbooks

10 THE DAVEY BULLETIN | November/December 2020 3 CONSECUTIVE HURRICANES CRASH INTO GULF COAST Richald Plumb is a traveling man. A general foreman on the AEP account, Plumb spent a good portion of this fall crisscrossing the Gulf Coast. With four bucket trucks in tow, Plumb and his nine traveling companions were part of Davey's storm recovery responses to Hurricanes Laura, Sally and Delta. Before that, Hurricane Isaias saw them travel all the way north to Rhode Island to help clean up after that storm wreaked havoc in the Northeast. "The crews have been outstanding, especially considering that we've been gone so long and they've been away from their families," Plumb said. "They understand that we have a job to do to help people out, and they've done really, really good with all this traveling." Plumb's crews started in Louisiana, where they were among 170 Davey employees from Eastern Utility services working on the Hurricane Laura recovery in late August. Then, they traveled to the Pensacola, Florida, area to work alongside 100 Davey Utility employees on the Hurricane Sally recovery in mid-September. Finally, they rolled back to Louisiana in October after Hurricane Delta struck near Creole, Louisiana, as a Category 1 storm with 100 mph winds. "It can get strenuous at times," Plumb said. "But we know the big picture is we are helping others." For Randy Mueller and his crews, their commitment to the Hurricane Laura response in Louisiana would see them spend 32 days helping Entergy restore power to its customers. Mueller, a general foreman on Davey's Tampa Electric account, worked with two other general foremen and a total 54 employees from the account who traveled from Florida. "We were among several other tree companies assisting with the recovery," Mueller said. "Our crews did such a great job serving the utility client that they kept us a lot longer after sending home a lot of the other companies." Like Plumb's and Mueller's crews, employees from the Davey Tree Surgery Company spent time zigzagging across MISSION Above: Davey trucks are seen en route to Pensacola, Florida, to help residents recover from damage caused by Hurricane Sally, which made landfall as a Category 2 storm in mid-September. Inset: Infrared satellite imagery shows how powerful Hurricane Laura was when it made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds in late August. the Gulf Coast – from Texas to Louisiana and Florida – responding first to Hurricane Laura and then Hurricane Sally. David Miller, operations manager, Davey Surgery, said about 64 employees from the CenterPoint Energy account traveled to Louisiana. Davey Surgery crews from Oklahoma and Texas, totaling almost 100 employees, also assisted Oncor with its infrastructure recovery after Laura hit northeastern Texas. "Major storm events offer added challenges because the work is typically outside of the normal routine," Miller said. "It's very rewarding to assist with two major hurricanes, across three states, with tens of thousands of man hours, and to do so incident-free. This is a direct reflection of our safety culture, our employees and our management." For Sally, Davey Surgery sent about 32 employees to Florida to assist Gulf Power. Sally also mangled the tree canopy at Naval Air Station Pensacola on the Florida panhandle, where Davey Commercial Landscape Services provides landscape care for residential housing at the base. Dan Morgan, Western regional manager, CLS, said the storm knocked down close to 350 trees, and another 300 trees were severely damaged and had to be removed. "We were able to get all the trees out, stumps ground and everything cleaned up in about three weeks," Morgan said.

• Cover