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November 2007

The People Behind the Power

It was Sunday, September 9th just after 8 a.m. I was still in bed, awake and thinking of getting up, when I heard a loud bang. The electricity went out. Somewhere on my street, a tap fuse had blown. I went downstairs to check the transformer in front of my house. The fuse protecting the transformer was still intact, so I knew the problem was not limited to the three houses this particular transformer serves.

I picked up the phone and called FKEC to report the outage. It was 8:08 a.m. Kevin Setchell answered the phone. He was manning our system control dispatch center that morning and had been on duty since 12 a.m. I told Kevin the problem. He said he would dispatch the on-call linemen.

By 8:40 a.m, Apprentice Lineman Bernie Lietaert arrived, followed closely by Crew Leader Darrell Davis. The fuse protecting the single-phase line that serves the street I live on had blown. Darrell told Bernie to set his truck up and get ready to replace the fuse while he rode the line out to see if he could find what caused the fuse to blow. Within a few minutes Darrell came back and told Bernie to go ahead and replace the fuse. Bernie climbed into his bucket, rode up the pole, and within five minutes the fuse was changed and every house on my street was back in service.

As I watched these men work I marveled at the efficiency of this restoration effort that took place early on a Sunday morning. It took these two men less than 45 minutes from my call to restore electricity to my street. I know for a fact that it took each of them at least 15 minutes to drive from their residences to mine, which means it took them less than 15 minutes from the time they got the call from Kevin to start rolling to my neighborhood. Each may have still been in their own beds when the call came in or maybe they were having breakfast with their families or simply drinking a cup of coffee and watching TV. Regardless of what they were doing before the call, they each had to leave their respective families, climb into their bucket trucks and hit the road to go to work early on a weekend morning for me, an FKEC member without electricity.

You may think, as you read this, that I received preferential treatment because I serve as the CEO of this electric cooperative. I know for a fact that I didn't. I hear similar stories frequently from people around town, but often their stories take place in the overnight hours and generally in the middle of a driving thunderstorm.

The heroes of this particular story were Kevin, Darrell and Bernie. However, there are 122 more people working at FKEC every day who are just as dedicated, who try just as hard to get it done right and who will be there to take your call and address your problem or request. I can't promise that we will always get it right the first time, but I can promise we will always try our best and that we will continue to strive to get better.

I tell this story to introduce you to a new feature in FKEC's monthly newsletter. Each month we will introduce you to a few FKEC employees and/or an FKEC director. We'll tell you a little bit about them, their jobs and their families. You see and hear enough from me. I think it's about time you get to know the people who really get the job done.

Scott is an active member of the Upper Keys community and is a past president, current director and president-elect of the Rotary Club of Key Largo, is a director for the Key Largo Chamber of Commerce and is co-founder and president of the Upper Keys Golf Association.

In 1994, Scott completed the three-year national electrical course for apprentice linemen to further his education in cooperative operations. He is a graduate of Leadership Monroe County Class XI and completed the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's Management Internship Program in 2005.

Scott graduated from Arkansas State University with a degree in Agriculture Business and Economics in 1986. In 1988, he began his career in the electricity industry when he joined the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in Washington, D.C. With the REA, he worked first as a Commercial Loan Specialist and was later promoted to Power Requirements Officer before moving to the Florida Keys to join FKEC in 1990.