Linemen return home after restoring more than 650k Floridian's power

Two weeks after Hurricane Milton viciously made landfall on the Florida coast, Oklahoma linemen are returning home.

Public Service Company of Oklahoma sent crews down for both hurricanes, to lend a hand in the aftermath.

Cameron Highfill was among them.

“First thing I did, I looked on there and checked the outages, and it was like three and a half million… and I was like, 'Awh man, we’re going to be down here a couple weeks,'" Highfill said.

He just got back home after 11 days of nonstop calls, working to get the power back on for the storm-battered communities.

“I didn’t know what we were going to see," the apprentice lineman said. "I’d seen some videos of the Florida governor saying like ‘evacuate now.’ I think he said 'or you’ll die,' like some extreme like that. I was like are we going to see some bodies or something? Like I didn’t know, rolling down there what we were going to see.”

This crew set up in Alabama the night before landfall before moving in to pick up the downed powerlines.

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Although things weren't as bad as they expected, Highfill and his team still had their work cut out for them.
"It was still pretty crazy seeing some of those trees; you couldn't wrap two guys' arms around them," he said. “We worked for Tampa Electric, and I think they have 800,000 total customers, and they had 650,000 out, so almost every one of their customers was out."

It took about a week, but with PSO's help, Highfill told 2 News affected customer's electric was back on inside of a week.

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Although it was 11 long days for the Oklahoma lineman, they kept their focus on why they were there in the first place.

"It's part of the job when you sign up for it, you know you're going to have to work storms," said Highfill. "Turning people's lights back on and hearing them cheering and constantly thanking you and giving you baked goods or whatever, it, I don't know, it feels good helping people out."

Here's how you can help bring relief to hurricane victims.

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