National Spotlight on NES After Storms

A tornado. A derecho windstorm. A pandemic. All in the span of a few months. And through it all, the Nashville community does what it does best. It comes together to help each other, as reflected in a recent story in the New York Times. The op-ed, written by Margaret Renkl, beautifully describes how Nashville weathered the recent storms, and Nashville Electric Service is honored to be highlighted in her story. Portions of the story are below, and you can read the full article here.

“Part of the dismay stems from the unusual weather itself. A rare system called a derecho sent hurricane-force straight-line winds blowing across Middle Tennessee, toppling ancient trees and power poles and leaving 131,000 people without electricity. Heroic Nashville Electric Service crews — which, because of concerns about the coronavirus, were working through the night without the usual assistance from teams in nearby states — got that number down to about 80,000 on Monday. That was before a weather system called a wake low, also rare, triggered yet another round of powerful storms and brought the number of people without power back up, to 120,000.”

“But then, only three days into the power outage, the heroes of the Nashville Electric Service arrived to perform their magnificent magic, stringing lines and erecting monster poles and hauling themselves up and down, up and down, sometimes with bucket trucks but sometimes with nothing but their own good muscles, a tool belt and some spiked shoes, for 15 hours straight.

When, finally, the lights came on, all the people standing in the street erupted into cheers and thank-yous — but not hugs and handshakes, for there’s still a pandemic to fear — and walked on home, laughing under streetlights, and stars they could no longer see.”