When Belmont Light linemen Jamie Viglirolo and Dan Rapaglia headed south to Georgia earlier this month to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, they found themselves driving through the storm itself.
“We got stuck in a town,” Viglirolo recalled. “There was just tree damage everywhere. We’d come to a tree, and everyone would have to get out and cut it down. Another hundred yards later, there’d be more trees. We spent a majority of the day trying to get to our destination.”
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At one point, it took them seven hours to find fuel because none of the gas stations had power to run the pumps.
They left for Sylvania, Georgia, about 80 miles northwest of Savannah, on Sept. 24.
“Georgia has never seen hurricanes like that,” added Rapaglia, noting the last storm of that strength was an ice storm in 2001. “They weren’t prepared for a storm like that.”
Viglirolo and Rapaglia went south from Sept. 25 to Oct. 4 as part of the Northeast Public Power Association (NEPPA) mutual aid response for Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Sept. 26. They were the first two Belmont Light line workers who volunteered to assist in storm recovery, joining 50,000 workers from public power utilities across 40 states and Canada. As part of their work, they helped to clear damage and restore power to nearly 4.5 million customers.
Two days after Viglirolo and Rapaglia’s return to Belmont, line workers Nick Kacoyanis and Tyler Moran volunteered to go south, this time to Orlando, Florida, in anticipation of Hurricane Milton, which made its way across the state on Oct. 10. With winds over 100 mph, the hurricane ultimately left more than 3 million people without power, according to the Associated Press.
Belmont Light General Manager Craig Spinale said sending workers is a volunteer process orchestrated by the American Public Power Association and coordinated through NEPPA.
“We recognize that we could just as easily be the requesters of mutual aid if Massachusetts was to endure an event of that magnitude and are happy to do our part,” Spinale previously said in an email to The Voice.
At the local level, he looks at the expertise needed in the impacted area and whether imminent local weather requires his team to remain fully staffed.
“The work getting the power back was nothing new to us,” said Kacoyanis, who had volunteered as a Belmont Light line worker once before, six years ago. “It’s … the same work we do here after a windstorm or microburst or snowstorm.”
What was different, he said, was working with so many other power companies.
“Most companies, their crews do things a certain way, [different] than how we do it,” Kacoyanis said. “You learn how they do something, and [they learn how] we do it. You all just start working together to do whatever you can to get the power back.”
All four line workers said that, overall, it was a good experience and that they’d be willing to assist again in future efforts.
“The people in the town we worked in – the hospitality was great,” Viglirolo said. “Even though they didn’t have power, they were very nice, appreciative. We stayed in a firehouse for a couple days. People from the community would cook us meals every day, so that was nice.”