Walter Booker didn’t even know where to start when he got his first look at the damage from Hurricane Gloria.
He’d worked his share of storms, having spent six years as a line worker, 1st class, at UI.
But Gloria was his first hurricane.
He and his colleagues were eager to do what they’d been trained to do. They’d waited out the Sept. 27, 1985 storm, stocking up trucks and readying equipment while Gloria raged outside. As the day wore on, the swirling bands of tropical wind and rain eventually yielded to the sort of crisp, sunny day that often follows a tempest.
It was a beautiful afternoon — if you could ignore the devastation.
“I had never really worked a big storm like that,” recalled Booker, who went on to become UI’s manager of safety and training, retiring last June after 43 years with the company.
“It looked like a giant just stepped on top of the whole street. There were trees everywhere, and things just were not where they were supposed to be.”
He continued: “So I just kind of turned to the guys and said, ‘Where the heck do we start?’ They looked at me and said, ‘“We start at the beginning and work our way to the end.’”
“And I said, ‘OK … Where’s the beginning?’”
The experienced UI workers tackled the damage methodically, working first to restore critical facilities such as hospitals, then working circuit by circuit to get the job done. For line workers, it meant long days in the field doing hard, physical work — a part of storm restoration that hasn’t changed in three decades.
Eight days after the storm, electric service was restored to all UI customers. Booker said many expressed their thanks directly.
“You’d get it more from the kids. They’d watch out the windows and see you working, and then when you’d get the power back on, they’d come out and say thank you,” he recalled. “The old ladies, they’d have cookies — how they baked those things with the power out, I have no idea, but they’d have cookies.”
Pipes and Poles 