While the entire nation was trying to come to grips with the horrible terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, DC and western Pennsylvania, Asplundh's Storm Coordination team and utilities in Florida were preparing for another kind of attack-Tropical Storm Gabrielle.

On the morning of Friday, September 14, Gabrielle made landfall on the Gulf Coast near Venice, Florida, bringing 70 mile per hour winds and up to 10 inches of rain. Local Asplundh crews in the Pat White and Rocky Robinson Regions, as well as our Farrens crews under Manager Martin Jasso, were on alert and ready to help utilities respond. Asplundh Construction Corp. crews under Manager Harry Burchell were also 'manning their battle stations'.

In the initial hours, the most heavily impacted utility, Florida Power & Light, reported approximately 400,000 of their 3.9 million customers were out of service, with the vast majority of outages occurring in Sarasota and Manatee Counties.

Storm Coordinator Brent Asplundh continued to line up crews from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, the Carolinas and Kentucky to move into Florida to assist. By Friday afternoon, more than 300 lift and manual tree crews, plus over 40 linemen from the Preston Polk Construction Division in Georgia, were on the way to the central Gulf Coast regions of Florida.

To keep the safety of our employees a top priority, Asplundh deployed a team of safety supervisors for tree and construction crews working in the areas affected by the storm. Juan Echazabal, Andrew Smith and Ron Miller moved throughout our storm operations to ensure safe work practices.

Overall, the storm response effort went very smoothly and while some out-of-town crews returned home within a few days, others stayed on storm duty for two weeks. We should all take pride in the excellent work done by our storm crews and their utility counterparts, many of whom left worried families behind as they worked long hours. Here are a few uplifting comments that were made about our crews:

Their teamwork was inspirational, all working together, giving encouragement and support to one another. They quickly assessed the tree situation and took over. Very quickly the tree was safely down. It was at the most intensive heat of the day, not a complaint from any of them. Just wanted to say a heartfelt thanks.
-e-mail from Sherry Lozon, Bradenton

We sincerely appreciate your help during this difficult storm restoration effort. Your employees were very professional and knowledgeable and provided invaluable assistance to us.
-John LaSelva, Manager of System Control and Reliability, Sumter Electric Cooperative Inc.