POWERGRAMS

8 had damaged or wiped out hundreds of homes and businesses. In many cases, there was only a pile of wood or bricks where a house had stood, and not a tree in sight, he said. Buster worked with other distribution specialists and contractors to set up stakes marking the locations for new poles, re-routed power from transformers to homes that could take electricity and determined where new wire needed to be strung. Buster said although there was damage at home, repairing it had to wait until power could be restored. "I knew my family was safe, and I knew I had a duty to perform my job for Alabama Power," he said. "The first step is always to restore power. It's a sense of pride to get the community up and running." Like Buster, Kelsey Tripp and Scott Mitchell were personally impacted by the tornado, yet they were on the job hours after the storm helping to restore service. Tripp, lead lineman at the Selma Crew Headquarters, said after the tornado moved through the area, he called home to check on his mom. That's when she told him that she was safe, but she had heard "windows breaking in the house." Leaving work, Tripp arrived to find trees blocking his street. After walking to his house, he saw that huge limbs from his neighbors' trees had broken two windows. Tripp later realized that trees had knocked holes in the roof, and the leaks from the rain damaged the sheetrock and caused portions of the ceiling to collapse. "I was thanking God that I had only a small amount of damage," Tripp said. "The houses on the next street were ripped apart, and the church on the street behind me was demolished." After asking his father-in-law to help nail boards over the windows, Tripp returned to work, where he immediately joined restoration efforts. For a week, he worked from dawn to bedtime, helping to set more than 350 poles and replace or splice "countless" spans of wire. "We were constantly moving," said Tripp. "The biggest challenge was that the traffic was so congested because people were trying to see the damage and see what we were doing instead of letting us do our job." Tripp said it made him proud to see his community pull together in response to the devastation. "I felt sorry for the people who had so much damage and, being the person that I am, I wanted to help get the power back on," he said. "It made me feel good to know that the community was working to get some normalcy back in the lives of these people. Everybody was helping everybody." After the tornado blew through town, Mitchell, Alabama Power linemen had to replace poles, wiring and other essential electrical components throughout Selma. A real estate app contains photos of house prior to tornado.

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