After Hurricanes Helene and Milton, you've probably been seeing bucket trucks all across the region with line workers on electrical poles restoring power to thousands of homes and businesses.
Suzy Macke is what's called a "troubleman" for Duke Energy — she's the first one on the scene to determine what the problem is before calling in the linemen. She has been volunteering to work 16-hour overnight shifts since just before Helene swept through with only one day off to prep her home for Milton.
She's been in the male-dominated industry for 15 years, three of them in Florida after moving from Ohio. WUSF's Jessica Meszaros spoke to Macke about the aftermath of these back-to-back storms at Duke's property in Largo.
What are the most common issues that you're having to deal with now, after these storms, after Milton? What are the things that you're having to address the most?
With Helene, it was more flooding issues. We did have some wind damage. But with Milton, it's a ton of wind damage. And it's trampolines blown into the power lines. It's trees down everywhere that have taken down whole pole lines. I mean, it's easy to fix one pole, but it's a whole lot harder to fix 20 poles. And we've had areas where we've had multiple poles in a row that have been down. So, the wind damage with Milton has really been the biggest challenge.
Do you think it's the most challenging scenario that you've worked so far?
For me, it's been probably one of the most challenging scenarios as far as we kind of feel like we're getting our butts kicked. We were just catching our breath from Helene, just starting to get cleaned up, thinking that there was an end in sight, and then to get beaten over the head with Milton … it's been a little disheartening.
And I moved to Florida because I love the beaches here. So, it was super emotional for me to go down to the beaches and see the destruction, and then to turn around and have that switch over to neighborhoods that I service and total destruction. I mean, roofs ripped off of trailers and fences down everywhere, trees on top of houses. That's been a little a little tough emotionally.
What area do you service, and do you live in that same area that you service?
I do actually live in the area that I service. So, I work out of our Walsingham yard here, which we service most of the beach area, from just north of St. Pete Beach to just south of Clearwater Beach. And then we serve as a big swath through the middle of Pinellas County, all the way out to the airport and I-275 so we have a big chunk of the area and a lot of customers.
And I actually do live in my area, so it's kind of cool that when I say that I'm getting the power on for my neighbors, like, literally, I see these people in the stores. Some of them recognize me and I really do feel a sense of community here.
You volunteer for these 16-hour shifts, the night shifts, so there has to be something that's motivating you to do this.
Everybody always thinks it's really hokey, but I actually do my job because I love helping my community. One of the big reasons I got into line work was that I wanted a job where I could feel like I was giving back to my community.
When I had an opportunity to become a lineman, I realized how much people depend on us, and so that's actually the biggest reason that I do it is for my customers. I mean, we all do it for a paycheck, but at least my big benefit is to getting to help my community, getting to help my customers - these people that I see in the grocery store, these people that I run into at the gas station, I get to help those people.
Can you talk about what it's like to be a woman in this industry? Like, even just the names of the jobs you've done have the word man in them… “lineman,” “troubleman.” So, what has it been like being a woman breaking into this industry?
There's been women prior to me. It's not like I'm the first one. There's been women who have been inspirations to me. There's just not enough of us yet. And honestly, I kind of feel like the verbiage for me at least, and for a lot of the women that I've talked to that have come into the industry, the verbiage for what they call us is kind of like being called an “actor.” If you're proud to be an actor, you're proud to be an actor. And it doesn't matter … we're proud of the job that we do. So, I'm proud to be a lineman. I'm proud to be a troubleman.
And it's been interesting being a woman coming into the field. There's been a lot of times that I'm the only one. I'm fortunate that twice in my career, I have had another woman that I've worked with once with a woman who was much senior to me, as far as years in the in the industry, and once now with an apprentice that's coming up. So I'm kind of getting to see both ends of the spectrum on that, which is really cool, but I try and advocate as much as I can for other women to try and join this industry.
It's a great job … it's physically hard, but it's not physically impossible for us to do. And there's a lot of things that we can learn to do to make the job work for our structure, our body size, our capabilities. You can do the job no matter what it's just you have to learn how to rig for it. You have to learn how to hook things up so that you can lift things and you can move things. And we don't have the upper body strength some of the guys do, but it's still it makes it so that we can actually do the job. There's tools and methods to be able to do that.
You're somewhat of … an advocate for women in this industry. Can you talk a little bit about that? And like a Facebook group I've heard about?
What I ran into was I knew a few girls who were coming in as apprentices, who had questions, and I would see them post the questions on some of the regular lineman pages. The responses they got were not always kind or helpful for some of their questions and some of their questions they were embarrassed to ask on a lineman page with a bunch of guys. When you're on a Facebook group that has, you know, 10,000 guys on, it's a little hard to ask: “Oh, hey, where do you go the bathroom,” and questions like that. So I decided I would start a group just for the women in the industry.
So I started a little Facebook group called Line Ladies. We're about 170 strong now across I believe we have five countries still being represented. Quite a few girls from Canada, quite a few of us from the US here. We did have one from Ireland and New Zealand represented, and I think also one in the Caribbean. So, we're working our way through and trying to get the numbers up.
But I've been several times asked to speak at different things so that I could kind of get the word out to women. Honestly, I think that's the biggest issue for getting more women into the industry. It's just a visibility thing. Before I hired in as a lineman, I didn't know that it was even a job that I could do, like it wasn't even on my radar. I grew up on a farm. I owned my own landscaping company. I've run heavy equipment, but nobody ever said, “Hey, why don't you go be a lineman?” And it was actually my husband who suggested, because he was a fleet mechanic for us. “Hey, they're hiring linemen. What do you think about doing that?” And so, I applied. It took me a couple of tries to get in, but I'm stubborn and a little determined, and so I kept trying until I made it.
