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Heavy lifting
Lineworkers need to be in top physical condition to perform their daily tasks and compete in rodeo events. Joe Wright, a lineman with Lynches River Electric Cooperative, gives his best effort in the challenging crossarm lift competition.
Photo Credit: Mic Smith
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To the rescue
Lowering an injured coworker to the ground for emergency medical treatment is a vital safety skill for all electric lineworkers, and the hurt-man rescue is a mandatory event in every competition.
Photo Credit: Mic Smith
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Winning ways
Representing Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, the journeyman team of (left to right) Jacob Kelley, Michael Sims and Anson Perry (shown with ECSC’s Nick Adams), placed third overall in the South Carolina rodeo. Weeks later, they beat out teams from multiple states to win first place in a regional rodeo, qualifying them to compete in the International Lineman’s Rodeo this fall in Kansas City.
Photo Credit: Mic Smith
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Family tradition
When apprentice lineman Russ Wannamaker (left) went to work for Tri-County Electric Cooperative in 2017, he became the third generation of his family to serve the co-op’s members. His father, Rusty (right), worked at the co-op as a lineman before joining the loss control and training staff at ECSC, the statewide association of cooperatives. Rusty’s dad, the late John Thomas “JT” Wannamaker, worked as a Tri-County lineman for 35 years.
Photo Credit: Walter Allread
When angry storms blow through the Carolinas, cutting electrical power and leaving thousands of homes and businesses in the dark, lineworkers—those individuals who brave the elements and very real dangers inherent in their jobs—strap on tool belts, don hard hats and head out into the field with one goal in mind: Get the lights back on as quickly and safely as possible.
Exactly how these men (and, yes, this is a male-dominated profession) go about their work is a mystery to most people, but each year the public has a chance to see exactly what they do during a daylong competition known as the South Carolina Lineworkers’ Rodeo.
“This is a chance for lineworkers to showcase for their families the skills they use on the job every day,” says Todd Carter, vice president of loss control and training for the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina (ECSC). “And it is an opportunity for them to test those skills against other linemen.”
Hundreds of people turned out for the 2018 competition at Horry-Georgetown Technical College in Conway. Spectators, family members, news crews and lineworkers began arriving well before the 8 a.m. opening ceremonies in a field adjacent to the college. Jennifer Wilbanks, the college’s vice president for academic affairs, welcomed them to the event.
She said her husband, Travis, has been a lineworker for more than two decades. One of the first things she learned in the marriage is that if a lineman is on call at home, he will almost certainly receive a phone call beckoning him to work just as the family is sitting down to dinner.
“The second thing I have learned is that linemen are a very unique and special group of individuals,” she said, pausing for a moment and scanning the faces in the crowd. “You guys are tough. Hardworking. Dedicated. Thank you for being here. Be safe.”
Then, after linemen hoisted an American flag and a South Carolina state flag to the top of two poles, the lineworkers set off for their first events of the day.
Let the games begin
ECSC Senior Loss Control Training Director Nick Adams and his crew had spent weeks preparing the competition site, planting nearly 50 wooden utility poles, stringing hundreds of yards of power line, attaching cross arms and braces to the poles and affixing transformers, insulators, fuses and fuse cutouts to them. While none of the lines carried electrical current, Adams said that all work in the competition was performed as if it were being done under real conditions in the field.
About 100 competitors from Santee Cooper and 15 of the state’s 20 electric co-ops were divided into two divisions—one for apprentice lineworkers with less than four years’ experience, and another for journeymen who have been on the job longer than four years. Competition events included a timed 24-question test for apprentice lineworkers that measured their knowledge of job safety. Journeymen, expected to have mastered this material, were exempt.
Other events—all aimed at testing physical endurance, attention to detail and practice of mandatory safety procedures—included tying a series of knots (square knot, clove hitch, running bowline) and then raising and lowering by rope an 8-foot-long wooden cross arm to the top of a 40-foot utility pole. Working the rope hand-over-hand, the men hoisted and lowered the 35-pound beam three times.
Meanwhile, in another event in which a mannequin played the role of an injured lineman, workers had to climb a utility pole and lower the dummy to the ground within a set period of time.
Other events required linemen to perform a series of detailed tasks atop a utility pole, replace one of the heavy and awkward wooden cross arms, work with insulated rubber gloves to replace a 600-ampere switch or change out a couple of dead-end insulators.
The men worked quickly, hard hats squared on their heads, high-dollar work boots—Red Wing, Hall’s, Hoffman, Wesco—laced tightly, climbing spurs digging hard into the wood of the utility poles. And fitted securely around their waists and looped around the pole was a literal lifesaver, the Buckingham BuckSqueeze, which—when used properly—will keep a lineman from falling 30 or 40 feet to the ground in the event that he loses his footing.
The fact that there is a need for such a device underscores the inherent dangers of this sort of work. And while South Carolina’s electric cooperatives have a remarkable safety record, the profession is routinely ranked among the nation’s most dangerous jobs. In 2016, 26 linemen in the United States lost their lives.
Training saves lives
Sometimes, the loss of good young men strikes close to home. ECSC’s Todd Carter was working a power outage during a major ice storm almost 15 years ago when a member of his crew failed to follow safety procedures and was electrocuted. The young man left behind a wife and two children.
“You can never let your guard down,” Carter says. “Electricity does not give you a second chance.”
Despite the dangers of the job, young men continue to enter the ranks of lineworkers. The money is pretty good, there is a fair measure of job stability and the work is well-suited for those who love spending their days outdoors with a team of like-minded colleagues.
But the job is not for everyone, as any number of linemen will testify. Men in this line of work need to be in top physical condition, labor in all kinds of weather, be prepared to perform under dangerous conditions and sacrifice time that could otherwise be spent with family or friends.
“You have got to have a positive attitude,” says Sean Stevens, 29, of Palmetto Electric Cooperative, during a break at the rodeo. “You know, I’ve got a 3-year-old and there are times when I go to work—especially during the thunderstorm season—when I won’t see him that day and I won’t see him that night. He’ll be asleep when I get home at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, and then you never know if the next night storms will roll in again. You miss birthday parties. Family events. Sometimes Christmas. But that is what we do. That is part of it.”
Another lineman, Henry Owens, 23, of Berkeley Electric Cooperative, has been a lineman for two years. Dedication, he said, is an essential part of doing a good job as a lineman.
“You have got to have a bond with all your fellow linemen,” says the Ladson, South Carolina, native. “You have got to know how everybody thinks. Got to know every person’s move. When you are up there in a bucket with somebody it’s both of your lives at stake and you have got to trust each other. This is very dangerous work. You have got to deal with the elements and the weather and you’ve got to work through anything—50–60 mph winds, hail, snow, sleet.”
William Fleming, the CEO of Marlboro Electric Cooperative, cited dedication, values and selflessness as some of the qualities of a good lineman.
“They want to help people,” Fleming says, watching his men compete in one of the rodeo events. “They want to do what is right. And they don’t mind undergoing the burden every day.”
‘A service for the people’
Thomas Scacchi, 33, of Palmetto Electric Cooperative, has been a lineman for almost 15 years. He signed on to the job a month or so after he graduated from high school. Working his way up through the ranks, he is now a supervisor.
For Scacchi, one key to being a good lineman—to getting the job done right and keeping himself and others safe at the same time—is patience.
“There are challenges every day,” Scacchi says. “So when you get a job, you just step back, look at it and approach it in a safe way. If you get in a hurry, that is when accidents happen.”
Despite the challenges of the job, linemen talk about their love of the work, their belief in service and the profound satisfaction they get in knowing that the long, difficult hours they sometimes spend on the job actually pay off when they see the lights click back on in a neighborhood.
“This is one of the hardest professions in America,” says Jacob Davis, 32, a lineman with Black River Electric Cooperative. “But I love the work and the camaraderie and knowing that you are doing a service for people.”
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So you want to be a lineworker …
Pre-apprentice training through South Carolina’s technical colleges is the best first step to a rewarding career as lineman, says Todd Carter, vice president of Loss Control and Training for the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina. Certificate programs teach students the basic skills and tools of the trade, and they provide the best opportunity to earn a commercial driver’s license (CDL). The combination of training and a CDL puts graduates “head and shoulders above other applicants” for entry-level apprentice lineworker jobs, Carter says. Once hired, lineworkers never stop training. It takes five to seven years of on-the-job experience and formal classroom instruction to qualify as a journeyman lineworker. Pre-apprentice training is currently offered by York Technical College (yorktech.edu), Trident Technical College (tridenttech.edu) and Horry-Georgetown Technical College (hgtc.edu).
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Three generations of linemen
As Rusty Wannamaker watched his 23-year-old son dig his climbing spurs into and work his way to the top of a wooden utility pole at the 2018 South Carolina Lineworkers’ Rodeo, he was particularly proud of the fact that he was watching a third-generation lineman at work.
“Go get ’em, Russ!” says Wannamaker, 55, director of loss control for the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina.
His son, Russell Thomas Wannamaker, is an apprentice with Tri-County Electric Cooperative and has been on the job since early last year.
Rusty Wannamaker says that his father, the late John Thomas “JT” Wannamaker, worked as a lineman for 35 years before retiring in his late 50s. He passed away about four years ago at the age of 81.
“When I was younger—maybe 11 or 12 years old—I went out with him a few times,” Wannamaker says. “I remember it was neat riding in those big trucks and being around the other linemen.”
Wannamaker says his decision to become a lineworker was his own and that his father never tried to influence his choice of careers. Nonetheless, he signed up with Tri-County Electric Cooperative when he was 20 years old and spent the next 16 years as a lineman before moving into loss control and training.
“I think my dad liked it that I became a lineman,” says Wannamaker. “And it is special to me knowing that my dad was a lineman, I was a lineman and now my son is a lineman. I am very proud of that.”
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