The day for a trouble men starts very early.
"You just never know what you're going to get," said Jeff Charleston.
Jeff Charleston has been doing this 34 years.
"Some people say I'm a trouble maker. But I'm a troublemen," laughed Charleston.
And by that he means he's the first responder for PG&E when there are power problems. You'll find Jeff in his blue truck that's very green. It's his office. But once you leave, the world outside is a dangerous one.
"It's dangerous work. And nothing is better than getting a customer and see the look on their face. It's really rewarding," said Charleston.
At one scene, once we arrived firefighters were already there. And residents were standing outside. Including William Lewis the property owner.
"I looked up and the blaze was coming up off the pole," said Lewis.
Most of the residents stood outside because there was no power inside.
What Jeff does is sort of a mystery to most people. Most don't even know how power is distributed. Like at a substation 115,000 volts blaze through here. A transformer bank steps it down to 12,000 volts. And there are also nearby circuit breakers. It acts as safety measures during major outages.
Back on scene it turns out it was a bad connector. It caught fire. A typical call for troublemen.
"It's basically a combination of load on the line and aging equipment which started the small fire on the transformer," said Denny Boyles.
In this neighborhood 186 customers will be without power. And a good share of them dropped by to see how long it will take. Boyles said it would take an hour. Another call for a troublemen.
TXT 24
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