Alliant Energy: Crews to assist with Hurricane Irma response

Alliant Energy trucks will hit the road early Tuesday morning to assist in the massive effort to restore power across Florida following Hurricane Irma.

In total, roughly 200 personnel from Iowa and Wisconsin have volunteered to spend the next two weeks away from their families to help the restoration efforts. This group includes line workers, safety staff, vehicle mechanics, support staff and managers.

Our personnel and contractors are joining more than 18,000 utility crews from across 30 states and Canada working to restore power to more than 6 million people.

In addition, tree trimmers and other contractors paused their work for our customers to lend their expertise to the recovery.

Florida utilities requested help through a national mutual assistance program among utilities. Typically, power companies close to an event respond. In this case, some local energy companies are already assisting with the response to Hurricane Harvey, and the damage from Hurricane Irma was so extensive that the request for help extended to energy companies in the Midwest.

Our customers have benefitted from this assistance when major storms hit our area. The most recent examples occurred in Iowa with the ice storm of 2007 and the floods of 2008. The last time our crews were needed in other parts of the country was 2012 when Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast.

We balance providing help with the need to keep enough staff on hand in the event of storms here. Our customers do not pay for the costs of this mutual assistance. The costs are borne by the utilities that request help.

Updates on our efforts will be posted here and on our Facebook page.