While most people were staying in from the winter storm at the end of January, a crew of six Wayne-White Electric linemen headed out into the elements to help some of our extended cooperative family in need in Kentucky, followed by another group of four a week later heading to Mississippi. Following Cooperative Principle #6 - Cooperation Among Cooperatives, Clint Harl, Jason McKinney, Kell Ragan, Todd Robertson, Donnie Smothers, David Vaughan, Travis Schilling, Craig Rennier, Colton Johnson, and Jaxson Crnovich all stepped up to answer the neighboring cooperatives’ call.
The first crew was sent to South Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation in Somerset, Kentucky. Unfortunately, South Kentucky RECC is no stranger to major storm damage. In May 2025, their main office headquarters building was destroyed by an EF4 tornado. Their communications systems were completely knocked out and power restoration efforts were reverted back to the old school ways: go out and physically find the outages and restore them.
As (bad) luck would have it, the South Kentucky RECC area was then hit again in January 2026 with severe weather: this time in the form snow and a large amount of ice from Winter Storm Fern.
At the peak of the power outages, South Kentucky RECC had over 28,000 members without power. To put that into perspective, that is nearly over three times the total amount of members Wayne-White Electric currently has.
The Wayne-White Electric linemen were assigned to the area surrounding Lake Cumberland. For six days, crews narrowed that number down to the final handful of individual outages in the remote areas that required more time-consuming work to restore.
Our second crew travelled down to Delta Electric Power Association in Greenwood, Mississippi. Delta EPA had 21,000 outages at the peak of their event. As of February 9, they estimated 926 poles damaged that needed replaced, 1,300 spans of wire to rehang, and 787 trees to be cut off the line.
We are thankful to report our crew returned safely back to work and are grateful for their willingness to serve not only our members, but the members of other cooperatives as well.
