Linemen spent weeks away from home responding to Helene, Milton

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Families of linemen waited for weeks to see them while they responded to back-to-back hurricanes Helene and Milton as energy crews in western North Carolina saw some of the worst destruction of their careers.

For Seth Caison, a Duke Energy supervisor in Greensboro, working in energy is a family business in more ways than one. His father and younger brother work for Duke and headed north to respond to Helene’s catastrophic flooding that knocked out power to millions.

However, being a lineman means your immediate family is part of helping restore the power, too. 

Back home, while he was away for three weeks, Caison’s wife cared for their two young children while also working. 

"My wife is awesome. She held the fort down," Caison said. "The ones at home are the ones that are keeping everything together for us while we're gone."

When a storm hits, Caison said his family and friends see the news and always reach out. One friend cut his grass while he was away, while others continued checking in to see if his family needed anything. 

"It takes a community. Family and friends were coming over, bringing super, helping with the kids. So, you know, once something like that happens, it is like everybody kind of pitches again nowadays."

Caison was gone for three weeks, longer than any other storm response of his 12-year career. After getting home, he and his wife went to pick up their boys from preschool, where he got some of the best welcome-home hugs. 

"When I left, he was just starting to walk," Caison said of his one-and-half-year-old. "And then I came around the corner to pick him up, and he was running. ‘Oh my gosh, did this happen?’"

‘Picking up the pieces’

Duke Energy teams in Greensboro watched on the news as Helene’s impacts steamrolled across the Carolinas, dropping more than 2 feet of rain in some places. Ultimately, the storm would claim more than 100 lives in North Carolina and create an estimated $53 billion in damages.

Soon after the outages started rising, Duke supervisors were told this was an "all hands on deck" situation and to prepare to head into the mountains.

Hundreds of linemen, engineers and contractors left the Greensboro region to restore power across western North Carolina. Caison’s team was in the Hickory area, approaching the start of the mountains. 

"I remember riding up that mountain there and just being like, wow, you can see the water line on the houses, and everything. We had debris hanging off of, not the top of poles, but, you know, like a little way down the pole," Caison recalled. 

Most linemen in the Carolinas refer to Hurricane Hugo from 1989 as one of the most challenging restorations of their careers. Caison said he had veteran linemen of more than 30 years say Helene was worse by the sheer magnitude of downed trees and flooding. 

"They were just laid over. It wasn't that they were broke. They were just laid over like the wind just came and just pushed them over," he said of the trees. "That’s when you started to realize like, 'Oh man, we're going, we're going to be here for a little bit,' right?"

ASHEVILLE STUDENTS RETURN TO SCHOOL ONE MONTH AFTER HELENE DEVASTATED CITY

After a storm, the first part of a response is getting essential places like hospitals and fire stations back online. 

"You basically just start picking up the pieces as you go, starting from your main feed and working your way out," Caison said. 

Cell service and communication were nonexistent in some places after Helene. Caison said he had to drive around to find a signal before they could set up a base camp. When teams headed up into the mountains, a crewmember had to stay at the base so they could have contact. 

The Greensboro Duke response team saw unbelievable damage, but Caison said many other teams saw devastation deeper into the mountains on a different level. Near Marion, crews finally got access to a town and discovered people in trees.

Two weeks after Helene, Hurricane Milton made landfall on Florida’s west coast. The Greensboro team was divided; some headed to Florida, while others continued working in North Carolina. 

Caison said that throughout the response, the communities were welcoming and appreciative of their work, offering to help his team however they could. After back-to-back disasters, it seems most people understand it's hard work getting the lights back on. 

"These two storms in particular, almost everybody we came across was so nice and helpful," he said. "Honestly, I think the media has done a good job at showing people what we have to do to be able to get the power back on."

Despite the long weeks away from home and the difficult conditions created by powerful hurricanes, Caison said linemen will tell you they love their job. 

"If you ask any linemen what their favorite part of their job is, they'd be lying to you if they didn't tell you they like to help people and getting their power back," Caison said.