Sixteen Met-Ed line workers departed Berks County Friday for West Palm Beach, Fla., where they’re expected to arrive to offer assistance as Tropical Storm Erika makes its projected landfall next week.
The local crew is part of 174 total line workers that FirstEnergy is sending, along with 65 contractors, said Scott R. Surgeoner, a spokesman for Met-Ed’s parent company, FirstEnergy.
The impending weather forecast spurred Florida Power & Light and other utility companies to ask for mutual assistance, he said.
“We have helped out a number of times in Florida over the past 10 years,” Surgeoner said. “It’s all up and down the east coast and into Texas – several mutual assistance organizations that we belong to. So when the call comes out for mutual assistance, we try to provide that if we can.”
In Florida, FirstEnergy workers “will be doing line work,” Surgeoner said, “and depending on the storm and severity of it, the typical response in storms like that is rebuilding the electric system, putting up new poles and restringing wire.”
Workers will report to West Palm Beach, where they’ll be dispatched out by the host utility company into other areas as necessary. Their length of stay will depend on the severity of the storm, though Surgeoner said all have been asked to pack for 7 to 10 days of work.
By 5 p.m. Friday, the National Hurricane Center was tracking Tropical Storm Erika moving into the Dominican Republic, traveling west at 21 miles per hour with maximum sustained winds of 50 miles per hour. Tropical Storm warnings were in effect across Hispanola, and a tropical storm watch was in effect in Cuba and the Bahamas. Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency Friday morning for all counties in advance of the storm.
According to AccuWeather meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, Erika is projected to take a northwest trajectory, hitting eastern Cuba Saturday morning and reaching the Florida Keys by Sunday evening, before moving north to Tampa by Monday night or early Tuesday.
“Basically, it’s just a rain producer,” Kottlowski said of Erika’s impact. “The storm is very, very disorganized right now. We don’t expect it to become a very big storm.”
An area of high pressure sitting over Virginia will block the core of the system from moving further north, with the bulk of the moisture expected to fall apart over parts of Georgia and Alabama, he added.
As for Pennsylvania, Kottlowski predicted: “It’ll have no effect on us at all.”
AccuWeather doesn’t project the storm causing problems for New Jersey beaches for Labor Day weekend.
Contact Becca Y. Gregg: 610-371-5032 or bgregg@readingeagle.com.
