Think your job is hard? NFH reporter Lindsey Harrison is finding many jobs that are tough. The first in the hard job series are the utility linemen.As operations manager at Mountain View Electric Association in Falcon, Claud Hugley said he is no stranger to the physical demands required of utility linemen.Hugley spent years working as a lineman and said he knows firsthand that the difficulty of the job also includes the danger surrounding it.ìYou don’t really understand what it’s like until you’re in a driving rainstorm trying to get someone’s power back on when you’re 40 to 50 feet in the air, trying to repair something,î Hugley said. And the linemen are working for the most part on power lines that are energized or hot, he said.In general, the voltage a MVEA linemen works on is 34,000 volts or less because it is the distribution or service side of the industry, Hugley said. The linemen repair power lines that deliver power to homes and businesses from the larger transmission power lines, he said. The lines can be either underground or overhead.Hugley said some linemen in the construction industry work on lines carrying up to 115,000 volts.ìWe have safety procedures to work on a line when it’s hot,î Hugley said. ìEven so, there are some linemen who have been burned. It happens occasionally and that’s just too often when it does.îìI think everybody is scared of electricity,î said Vern Unruh, general foreman at MVEAís Falcon location. ìYou can’t see it but you have to be in control of it. No human is quick enough to react if they make a mistake.îìOne thing people forget is that we physically have to go out and get your service back on,î Hugley said. ìWe can’t just flip a switch.îA general pole holding up a power line is between 29 and 60 feet high, he said. Sometimes, linemen are required to climb the pole, which requires use of their upper body. Various tools and parts can add extra weight, Hugley said.William Wilmoth, line superintendent for MVEA in Falcon, talked about pole work. ìUsually, if you’re working on a pole, you have someone on the ground sending stuff up on a hand-line,î Wilmoth said. Any time a lineman is fixing a problem, safety standards mandate that at least two people are working at the site.ìSometimes, we work right off the pole and sometimes we work from a bucket truck,î Hugley said. ìIt’s not just the fact that you’re using a lot of your upper-body strength, but it’s also the peculiar position you’re in. You could be putting a wire grip on that’s out as far as you can reach.îìSomething else that makes it really hard is that you could be working on a high voltage, energized line at altitude in not-so-good weather with high tension,î Unruh said. ìThese wires are pulled to a tight tension and the pole you’re working from might break because of that. Ice storms are bad because the ice puts so much weight on the lines, the pole starts to break.îEducation is vital to becoming a lineman. ìWe all started out as ground men, then worked through a four-year apprenticeship program, got our journeyman’s license, and worked our way up in the company,î Hugley said.ìThe final journeyman’s test can be pretty strenuous, but on-the-job training is the biggest part they have to learn. Every situation is different.îSome schools in Colorado offer education for potential linemen. Hugley said education is a big help in getting oneís foot in the door of a company. ìWhen someone is hired off the street, you don’t know if they’re going to like working up a pole,î he said. ìThe schools teach them to climb, as well as getting them the license to drive our trucks. It doesn’t mean they’re going to make it as a lineman; it just means they have a general idea of what it’s going to take.î
