"This is Going to Go On Forever" - A DEC Employee Recalls His Experience During the Ice Storm of '94

When the Ice Storm of ’94 hit Delaware, DEC’s assistant manager of field engineering Paul Greenlee had only been with the Co-op for about seven years, and at that time he was working as a lineworker – part of the frontline team charged with restoring power to 40,000 members. Greenlee says he remembers working out on the lines the night the storm struck, recalling the contrast he recognized between the beauty of the wintery landscape versus the damage it was already beginning to cause.

“I was west of Harrington, and there were trees on both sides of the road I was working on – laden down with snow and ice – and they formed a little tunnel over the road. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this looks so cool.’ Then Gene Wells, our operations department manager at the time, came in over the radio and said we had 300 poles down,” Greenlee says. “It was just a surreal feeling. I remember thinking, ‘I’m never going home – this is going to go on forever.’”

Over the next ten days, many crews worked 12-hour shifts, with some working as many as 16 hours at a time. Greenlee and his crewmate – lineworker Donnie Lofland – were on the 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. shift. During one of their assignments on Park Brown Road in Harrington, Greenlee says the continuous damage caused by nearby tree limbs snapping and falling on the lines made his and Lofland’s restoration efforts impossible, eventually resulting in the delay of repairs.

“I don’t know how many times we cleared the line and tried to reset the breaker on Park Brown Road before we realized we could not get it back on,” Greenlee says. “Every time we tried, something else would fall on the lines.”

This was the case for many crews working across DEC’s service territory. Greenlee says he remembers when branches would snap, the sound resembled that of gun shots.

On another occasion, Greenlee and Lofland were responding to damage on Steeles Ridge Road near Camden when the icy conditions almost caused them serious trouble.

“I was driving the bucket truck, and we were making a left turn to go into a driveway,” Greenlee recalls. “As I was making the turn, the truck lost traction and because the road was crowned, the back end of it started to slide downhill. There was a ditch on the east side of the road, and the back of the truck was headed right for the ditch. There was nothing I could do.”

Thankfully, Greenlee said there was a short metal pole sticking up from the ground, just tall enough to halt the truck’s slow slide before it entered the ditch. He and Lofland were able to use guywire and the come-along winch on the truck to right their direction, but it was a close call that stuck with Greenlee.

Thanks to the dedication of Greenlee and his fellow lineworkers who braved the cold and dangerous conditions brought on by the Ice Storm, members could rely on their lights – and most importantly their heat – being turned back on as safely and as soon as possible.