“The harsher the elements, the more hours we’re going to have to work,” J.T. Cooper said.

Cooper is one of the Entergy employees who helped restore power to areas of Warren County during last weekend’s storms. He has been in the power line professions for 11 years and at Entergy for the past seven months.

On a normal day, Cooper said his job as a serviceman is to do maintenance and keep up the infrastructure of the power grid, but when a storm blows in, he restores power as a linesman and reestablishes the lines on sometimes up to 16 hour days.

“Anytime somebody’s out of power, whether it’s 15 minutes or two days, it’s a big deal,” Cooper said.

The first order of business when repairing the line is to make sure all the paperwork is ready and in place to help minimize costly mistakes. He said sometimes people don’t understand that the plan has to be approved before any work can be done.

“You’ve just got to take it one piece at a time until you get everything done. You can’t just start going at it or we’ll get people hurt,” Cooper said.

They also have to make sure teams are sent to different lines so that no one doubles up, which could lead to electrocution. There is a list of safety standards the men must adhere to so no one gets injured.

“We have safety procedures in place to where we have to do our paperwork to make sure we can get the work done and not only get it done but all of our men go home at the end of the day,” Cooper said. “If we don’t follow those procedures and we make a mistake it’s usually life or death.”

Often, crews have to leave their own families in the dark to search for the cause of the outage. Once they find the cause and make the repair, they have to follow the line to make sure it’s not fallen down in another location. First they work on the main lines that connect hospitals and businesses, and then they make their way down to the minor lines.

“Sometimes it’s taxing, but it’s all worth it when you get that one customer that comes out and tells you, ‘We sure do appreciate it’ and brings you a glass of tea or a cup of coffee,” Cooper said.

To become a linesman, Cooper had an apprenticeship under a senior linesman for four years where he learned to climb poles, first aid, medical training and more. They routinely take courses to keep up their certifications and to make sure all the crews use to the same terminology to cut out any miscommunication.

“Our training is ongoing,” Cooper said. “In line work you’ll go through training until the day you retire.”

The linesmen have a close bond because they are with each other often, sometimes more than their own families. Crews are very aware of each other’s emotions and Cooper said they have to recognize when someone is having a bad day and help them focus. The coworkers become their own family.

“If something happens to one of us, it affects all of us in a big way,” Cooper said.

The hardest part of the job is being away from his family. Cooper is transferring to Jackson soon to be closer to his wife and daughters.