Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Journalist
Davidson resident Jean-Marc Soucie was about a decade into his 34-year career as a Hydro Quebec lineman (and later, supervisor) when he learned what it was like to be on the receiving end of a damaging storm, rather than the guy who comes in to restore order afterwards.
He was living in Aylmer at the time, when a bad storm damaged his house and car, and destroyed his swimming pool. It was at least 48 hours before he was able to return to his home.
“Then I found out what it was to be a victim of all of these storms, so I understand what the people go through because I went through it,” Soucie said.
“But it’s nothing compared to what them people in the Carolinas are living right now. Some people have lost everything. Their house. Their clothes. Their food. They’ve even lost their relatives that drowned. It’s pretty bad over there.”
Soucie was one in a small group of Pontiac men who spent the first three-or-so weeks of October in North Carolina, working to bring power back to the approximately three million people who were without electricity following Hurricane Helene.
The others included his brothers Claude Soucie, Denis Soucie, and Lawrence Gagnon.
Jean-Marc Soucie spent his career doing storm cleanup across eastern Canada and the United States. After retiring in 2012, Soucie was invited to join a workforce of semi-retired hydro technicians employed by Holland Power Services who get called in to do massive hydro restoration projects after high-intensity storms wreak havoc.
The first place Soucie was sent was North Carolina, to clean up damage caused by Tropical Storm Michael in Oct. 2016. As the job was wrapping up, the company asked for volunteers to go straight to the Bahamas for another job.
“So I put my hand up after my wife gave me the okay, and I went to the Bahamas, so we were gone 25 days,” Soucie chuckled. “That’s when I said, ‘You know, I like this gig.’”
Now, Soucie is the general manager for the company’s Iroquois division – one of five it has across eastern Canada.
On this most recent trip to North Carolina, Soucie and a crew of 760 workers with Holland Power Services were called in a day before the hurricane hit, and spent the night waiting out the storm in the hotel.
“We didn’t know what to expect. We were listening to the news, and watching our phones and all of that,” Soucie said. “And then everything went black because we didn’t have any more power. Communication was out because quite a few telecom towers were out. So we woke up the next morning to see all the damage that the hurricane had caused, and then as the days went on, we found out how bad it was.”
Holland Power Service’s vice-president of operations Steve Hansen was also working in North Carolina this month.
“In this case we were seeing things like a 150-foot tall, full-size oak tree, complete with its root ball, that’s knocked down an entire line,” he said, describing the damage crews woke up to the morning after the storm. “There were whole sections of road that were missing.”
Soucie and the group of 118 employees he was responsible for were working mostly in the North Carolina mountains, in both Asheville and Hendersonville – challenging terrain that didn’t make the already difficult work any easier.
“The worst thing that happened is the communications were down. We had a hard time finding where we needed to go, because we rely on our phones to go to addresses,” Soucie said, noting the washed out roads and fallen trees didn’t make getting around any easier.
While in the field, workers were warned to beware of a certain kind of rattlesnake, a dangerous red-headed spider, and ticks, a task Soucie said became more anxiety-inducing when evening would fall, making it harder to see where he was stepping.
Hansen said beyond the obstacles created by the destroyed landscape, the unfamiliar climate often adds an additional challenge to the long work days.
“Coming from a Canadian climate into the Carolinas, the heat and humidity are very high,” he said.
The men worked 16-hour days starting at 6 a.m. At the end of their shift, they would all gather under a tent for a hot buffet-style meal provided by the host utility company, and then usually be in bed by 10 p.m..
Soucie said work was always on the mind, even when he wasn’t actually on the job.
“You have to try to help the people the best you can and the best way we can do that is to put the power back on so they can have something as close to a normal life as it can be.”
In one location where his crew was working, only four of the town’s 64 homes were left standing after the flooding had receded.
Soucie added that in his particular area, 111 people had drowned and 1,000 people were still unaccounted for by the time he was leaving.
“You’re astonished by it and you feel hopeless because you wish you could help in other ways but you don’t have the equipment to do it,” he said.
Hansen said the frequency and intensity of storms varies from year to year, based on all of the climatic factors including the warmth of the ocean, whether it’s an El Nino year, and what the gulf currents are doing.
“But this year has certainly been predicted to be a higher than normal year for number of storms that make landfall, and thus far that is proving to be true, sadly,” he said. “As the climate shifts we are seeing a different set of challenges than when the company was formed a number of years ago.”
Hansen noted the workers do not receive any kind of trauma training, but do receive benefits and access to a call line if they need to process some of the devastation they are bearing witness to.
Soucie, however, said his preferred way of unwinding once he gets home is fairly simple.
“You try to get a good night’s sleep, and have a good beer,” he said.