by Tim Smith
Lightning splits the sky.
Rain blows sideways against the windows, and somewhere in the darkness a tree crashes onto a power line.
In the winter, freezing rain coats tree limbs until they can no longer bear the weight, and they come crashing down, taking power lines with them.
Most of us experience these storms from the safety of our homes. We pull another blanket over our shoulders, light a few candles, or begin wondering how long it will be before the electricity comes back on. It doesn’t take long before impatience sets in as minutes turn into hours.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably found yourself grumbling when the lights stay out longer than you expected.
Then I stop and think about what has to happen before those lights come back on.
Someone has to leave a warm bed in the middle of the night, kiss their family goodbye, climb into a truck, and drive straight into the worst of the storm. While everyone else is looking for shelter, they are heading toward the danger.
Those people are linemen.
They work for cities, electric cooperatives, power companies and independent contractors. Sometimes a call-out lasts only a few hours. Other times it means leaving home for days — or even weeks — to help communities devastated by hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, floods and wildfires.
It is difficult enough just being in those places. For a lineman, it also means working around power lines carrying 13,000 volts of electricity.
This is work that allows very little room for mistakes.
One moment of inattention can cost a person their life or the life of a fellow worker. The job is dangerous even on a beautiful spring afternoon. During a storm, when rain, wind, darkness, ice and exhaustion are all working against you, the danger only increases.
So why would anyone choose this kind of career?
That was the question I asked Matt Deville, superintendent of electrical distribution for the City of Ruston.
“Why would anyone want to do this job?”
Matt laughed before answering.
“I have no idea.”
We both smiled, knowing there had to be more to the story than that.
“It’s a good career,” he said. “It’s a good living, and you’re just about always guaranteed a job.”
He isn’t wrong.
Electricity has become something we rarely think about until it disappears. When it does, we quickly realize just how much our lives depend on the people who keep it flowing.
For Matt, that career began nearly 30 years ago.
“You start as an apprentice,” he explained. “You’re not really hands-on at first. You do exactly what your supervisor tells you. You watch, and you learn.”
Matt left college when an uncle offered him a job with an electrical service contractor. That opportunity became a career that has taken him across Louisiana and into other states whenever disasters left thousands of people without power.
Over the years, that career has taken Matt far from home whenever disaster struck.
He has spent weeks at a time restoring power in Florida after hurricanes and has worked throughout south Louisiana following some of the worst storms our state has endured.
Most of us work our shift, clock out and head home to our families. For linemen, there are times when “going home” isn’t an option.
“The way it used to be,” Matt said, “you would work until you couldn’t anymore. Then you’d get a little rest and go right back at it.”
Eventually, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) stepped in and established a maximum 16-hour work period before mandatory rest. Sixteen hours still sounds extraordinary, especially when those hours are spent climbing poles, handling heavy equipment and working around high-voltage power lines in miserable weather.
Storm restoration isn’t simply hard work—it’s physically exhausting and mentally demanding. Every decision has to be made carefully because there is no room for complacency around electricity.
Matt has seen his share of storms over nearly three decades.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated southeast Louisiana, he spent a month working near Slidell, helping restore power to communities whose lives had been turned upside down. Before that work was even finished, Hurricane Rita struck farther west, and he was sent there as well.
Closer to home, he and his crew responded after the tornado that tore through Ruston in 2019. Then came Hurricane Laura in 2020, bringing sustained winds of nearly 75 mph to Ruston and leaving thousands without electricity. Not long afterward came what many people around here still call “Snowmageddon,” the historic winter storm of 2021 that coated roads, trees and power lines with ice.
For most of us, those storms are remembered because we lost electricity.
For linemen, they’re remembered because they never stopped working.
I asked Matt what creates the biggest challenges for linemen today, beyond the weather itself.
His answer surprised me.
“People not staying home,” he said without hesitation.
He explained that during ice storms and severe weather, people often decide to drive around just to see what’s happening. Too often, those trips end with another damaged utility pole and another neighborhood without power.
Matt recalled one incident during the winter storm of 2021.
“A guy in a Dodge truck lost control near Log Cabin Grill and hit a power pole. When that pole broke, it caused two more poles to break with it.”
His crew arrived around 10 p.m. that night.
“We worked until after daylight the next morning getting everything repaired. If he’d just stayed home instead of riding around, we could have been helping other people.”
There wasn’t any anger in Matt’s voice when he told the story—only the quiet frustration of someone who had seen an already difficult job become even harder because of one unnecessary decision.
His advice was simple.
“If you don’t absolutely have to get out during those conditions, please stay off the roads.”
Sometimes the best way to help the men restoring your electricity is simply to stay out of their way.
Before we finished our conversation, I asked Matt one final question.
“Besides staying off the roads during bad weather, what is something you wish people knew?”
His answer had nothing to do with storms.
It had to do with generators.
“People need to be careful using portable generators during a power outage,” Matt said.
Most permanently installed home generators are connected through a transfer switch. When city power fails, the switch safely disconnects the house from the electrical grid before supplying power from the generator.
Portable generators are different.
“If someone buys a generator from Lowe’s, for example, and simply plugs it into a wall outlet without the proper equipment,” Matt explained, “it can feed electricity back through the meter and into the service transformer.”
To most homeowners, that may not sound like a serious problem.
To a lineman, it can be deadly.
A transformer normally reduces approximately 13,000 volts of electricity to 120 volts we use in our homes. But when electricity from a portable generator is sent backward through the system, that same transformer works in reverse, stepping 120 volts back up to thousands of volts.
A lineman working on what should be a de-energized power line could suddenly be exposed to lethal voltage.
“It’s a danger they don’t need,” Matt said.
It was another reminder that restoring electricity isn’t simply about replacing broken poles or restringing power lines. Every repair depends on careful procedures, constant awareness, and trusting that the public is doing its part as well.
Fortunately, responding to emergencies isn’t all the Electrical Distribution Department does.
Matt spoke with pride about the projects his department has completed throughout Ruston, especially the downtown revitalization efforts. Monroe Street, Homer Street, Texas Street, Arizona Avenue, West Mississippi Avenue and now Bonner Street all reflect work that most people never notice. Moving power lines underground isn’t glamorous, but it improves reliability, safety, and the appearance of our city for generations to come.
Like so much of what linemen do, their best work often goes unnoticed.
Most of us never think about where our electricity comes from until the lights go out.
We flip a switch, charge a phone, turn on the air conditioner, or brew a pot of coffee without giving a second thought to the people who make those everyday conveniences possible.
Maybe that’s because they’re doing their job so well.
The next time a thunderstorm rolls across Lincoln Parish and the lights begin to flicker, I’ll probably still hope the power comes back quickly.
But I’ll also think about the men climbing into bucket trucks while the rest of us are heading for shelter.
Long before the lights come back on, they’re already on their way.
And that’s exactly where Matt Deville and the men and women of the City of Ruston Light and Power Department expect to be.
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The Lincoln Parish Journal salutes the men and women, not only in Lincoln Parish, but everywhere who work tireless — sometimes dangerous — hours to restore power during storms.
