POWERGRAMS

15 T avel then and now manages out-of-town line crews contracted by Alabama Power to help restore electricity aer major storms. And what a storm Ivan was – a Category 3 hurricane causing 825,000 outages, the most in company history. "I had only been on the job six months when Ivan hit and had never worked a storm in that role," Tavel recalled. "I was very green and scared to death. Here we were looking at a major hurricane to hit our service territory and I was expected to bring in thousands of outside resources to restore power." The 2004 hurricane season began June 1. It was one of the latest starts on record, with the first named storm popping up July 31. Three major hurricanes and a tropical storm – including Ivan – hit Florida: Charley, a Category 4 storm, made landfall 100 miles south of Tampa Aug. 13, the day aer Tropical Storm Bonnie came ashore in the Panhandle near Apalachicola. Hurricanes Frances and Jean made landfall 52 days apart at the same location 50 miles north of West Palm Beach. Ivan roared in around Gulf Shores in the wee hours of Thursday, Sept. 16, packing 128 mph winds. It made a beeline through southwest Alabama north to Selma, then curved slightly northeast to hit Birmingham, still packing a punch with 40 mph winds. Ivan was described in an Alabama Power news release as "a natural disaster of historical proportions." It stayed a hurricane 150 miles inland, downgraded to a tropical storm at Uniontown in Perry County 12 hours aer landfall at Gulf Shores. It spawned a near-record 52-foot wave in the Gulf of Mexico at a buoy 60 miles south of Dauphin Island and brought a storm surge 10-15 feet high and 10 inches of rain along the Alabama coast. The 6-9 inches of rain Ivan dumped on Birmingham was the most in a single day in 100 years. From the time it started as a tropical depression Sept. 2, Ivan gained Category 5 strength three times. Aer exiting the Mid-Atlantic states, it looped back around in the Gulf and reformed, finally fading as a tropical depression along the Louisiana coast eight days aer making landfall at Gulf Shores. "I remember driving in the morning aer Ivan had made landfall, not knowing what to expect and worried about my wife and kids that I had le to ride out the storm by themselves," Tavel said. "We ended up having three big oak trees down in our backyard." He remembers the wind was so fierce at Corporate Headquarters it blew rain under the windows of a 10th floor conference room near the Storm Center. Tavel, meanwhile, wasn't the only greenhorn on deck. "We had not experienced a statewide major hurricane event since Hurricane Opal in 1995," recalled Steve Kirkham, general manager of Power Delivery for Mobile Division, who in 2004 was Western Division Distribution support manager. Plywood window covering showed homeowners were tired of hurricanes.

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