Alabama utilities began gathering up Tuesday and heading east to Gainesville, Savannah, and Green Coves and Newberry.

With Hurricane Idalia strengthening into a likely Category 3 storm and bearing down on the Florida Gulf Coast, utilities from the Tennessee Valley to the Gulf Coast are preparing to spend some time assisting with power restoration, trimming trees, and removing debris.

The crews are mostly adhering to mutual aid agreements that have long been established.

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“Our job for mutual aid to is bring the crew members, and requested types of equipment,” said Jonathan Hand, executive director with Electric Cities of Alabama, which represents 36 municipal-owned utilities in the state. “We’ll be sending over there and work over there until their job is complete.”

What is unknown is where some of these crews will ultimately end up. That all depends on Idalia’s path. The powerful storm was expected to bring storm surge that could reach once-in-a-lifetime levels along Florida’s Big Bend region, or upwards of 10-15 feet, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The following plans are being hatched out:

• Alabama Power is sending 350 crew members to assist Georgia Power. The storm’s path includes areas like Savannah, where the utilities crews could be assisting although nothing is confirmed yet. Utilities are anticipating widespread power outages in Southeast Georgia.
• Riviera Utilities in Baldwin County, and the cities of Fairhope, Troy, Andalusia, Dothan, and Sheffield, are all sending crews to Florida. Overall, 350 mutual aid resources from nearly 50 public power utilities across 13 states including Alabama will be in Florida to assist the state’s public power crews.
• The Alabama Rural Electric Association of Cooperatives, which oversees 21 co-ops throughout Alabama, said it was simply too early on Tuesday to assess where crews might be headed. Co-ops have been contacted and asked to consider making a commitment on sending a crew eastward after Idalia makes landfall.

At Riviera Utilities, 21 crew members gathered up outside a truck stop in Loxley early Tuesday and left for Gainesville, Florida. The crew will assist Gainesville Regional Utilities in restoration work. The crew included electric line workers, engineering coordinators, and a vegetation management crew, according to spokeswoman Lily Jackson.

“Riviera has an ongoing mutual aid agreement with Gainesville Regional Utilities, and we are happy to lend a helping hand to another public utility, as they have assisted us in the past,” she said.

Indeed, the agreements provide a guidance on where utilities or their oversight agencies will send work crews following a disaster. The agreements are also reciprocal: If a hurricane makes landfall in Alabama, the utility companies in Florida and Georgia will send crews to assist in re-establishing power.

After Hurricane Sally devastated Baldwin County in 2020, utilities from Gainesville assisted Fairhope in getting power restored.

Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan said that nine crew members with Fairhope Utilities – which includes a line, tree and mechanical crew – are going to Gainesville and are expected to be in the city for “at least a week.”

“How long they will be there depends on the storm,” Sullivan said. “Gainesville came here during Sally. So we are happy to help them.”

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Beth Thomas, spokeswoman with Alabama Power, said that utilities from across the country are park of a network of mutual assistance for recovery efforts following severe weather. She said that groups are assigned to potentially impacted areas and that Alabama Power – the Birmingham-based subsidiary of Southern Company – was “assigned to assist Georgia this time.”

The coordination is a national effort, coordinated among public power utilities by the Virginia-based American Public Power Association.

“Everyone is in preparation mode,” said Adrienne Lotto, APPA Senior Vice President, Grid Security, Technical & Operations Services. “Right now, no one has an unmet need.”

Lotto said the only concern is with the potential shortages of electric distribution transformers, which are in short supply in the U.S. The transformers, often found atop a power pole, are the mechanical devices that bring power to residential and commercial areas.

“The utilities are sharing resources and it’s a concern going into hurricane season,” she said. “If (there are) multiple storms in a row, supplies might not be available and that could create longer restoration times.”