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The men from New Orleans were an impressive sight as they pulled out of a South Tampa supermarket parking lot and rumbled north on Henderson Boulevard in a slow convoy of white trucks. They work for a Louisiana utility company, Entergy, and they were about to become the most popular guys on a shady stretch of DeLeon Street, where the power had been out for as long as six days.
They showed up dressed in their macho, necessary best: jeans, heavy boots, hard hats, orange vests, thick rubber gloves and a meter around their necks that emitted a long squeal to warn them when they neared a live wire.
Safety was everything to these men. Once they sketched out what they needed to do, each man had to sign something called a hazard assessment sheet that listed dangers on site to avoid.
One lineman was going up 40 feet in the air in a bucket hoisted by the long lift in the back of a company truck. Wires leading to the electric pole were live. His job was to repair a burned wire that led from a switch to the transformer that fed power to people on this part of DeLeon.
The workers from Entergy - and others like them - are the firefighters of hurricanes. When emergency strikes, they jump in from out-of-state power companies to aid the likes of Tampa Electric, through a pact called the Southeastern Electrical Exchange, in which the utilities agree ahead of time to help out in a crisis.
Entergy sent more than 650 workers. Crews also came from Texas, South Carolina and Maryland. According to TECO, tree trimmers came from as far off as Idaho.
Their Florida trek is no vacation. The men I met had been working as late as 10 p.m. some nights. They had been in the state for 10 days during Charley. They had been in Tampa for three days post-Frances.
While others watched, the bucket easily lifted the lineman who was to fix the bad wire. He moved this way, then that, seemingly undaunted by the height or danger.
That steeliness must be a requirement of the job. One senior lineman, Kenney Benoit, insisted that the work is like any other. "Know what you're supposed to do and follow the rules," he said. If you do, you won't get hurt.
From where I stood, that seemed a little hard to believe. I'd heard, after all, about last week's death of a TECO worker killed by a falling tree limb.
In the end, the trouble on DeLeon Street was easy to fix. The wait had seemed unending to those with dark televisions and cold toasters. But the lineman spent all of 15 minutes in the air, before he was gently lowered down.
Then magic happened. The lights went back on in people's houses. They could take hot showers. Make coffee. Most of all, listen to the hum of their air conditioners.
The Entergy linemen notice the Tampa drivers who pass by with thumbs-up signs. One grateful woman delivered six pizzas. There was no pizza on DeLeon Street. Just one very happy human, Dina Vann, who had been out of power for six days. She came running out of her house with her arms raised up in victory, fists half clenched, a broad smile on her face.
"Thank you!" she shouted at the linemen, as though they were her new best friends. The men seemed used to this kind of gratitude. They smiled modestly, climbed into their trucks and moved on to their next assignment.
Before they left, the man in charge of the crew, Woody Washington, made a prediction, almost cheerfully: "You can also say we'll be here for Ivan," he said.
It could be Tampa. It could be the Panhandle. Either way, I was reassured.
These guys on DeLeon Street weren't just electrical linemen. Like the police, the firefighters, the people who run your local emergency operations centers and the volunteers who run the shelters, the linemen are among the heroes of hurricanes. We may never know their names, never meet them, but we count on them. Count on them like trusted friends.
You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.