What It Takes

Keeping the community well-lit, safe

Tyler Pinegar has seen just about everything that can knock an Omaha-area streetlight out of commission: car crashes, fallen trees, hail, rust, bullets, car crashes (again, at the same pole!) and severed underground wires, to name a few.

Keeping the metro well-lit and safe is a busy job, and only part of the vital role that Pinegar and other streetlight workers fill at OPPD.

OPPD maintains more than 108,000 streetlights throughout Omaha and nearby communities. Drive anywhere and you’ll see them illuminating busy highways, quiet neighborhoods, downtown business districts and backyards.

All those lights – in dozens of shapes, designs and fixtures – need to be maintained. And streetlight workers are on the job pretty much everywhere, from Fort Calhoun to the Platte River and the Missouri River down to Yutan.

“Every day is different,” Pinegar said. “You get an address where something needs to be fixed, but you don’t really know what’s wrong. Troubleshooting is the fun part.”

Tools of the trade

Just like line technicians and troubleshooters, streetlight workers patrol OPPD’s service territory in bucket trucks with all the tools of their trade: electric crimpers, chain saws, impact drills, fuses, nuts, bolts and long loops of wire, among other items.

Sometimes, Pinegar finds himself high in the air in a bucket truck, fixing broken streetlights on a busy stretch of Interstate 80. Or replacing damaged neighborhood poles. Or helping his co-workers cut through thick, overgrown trees that caused a streetlight outage.

Pinegar, a 5-year OPPD veteran, didn’t plan to become a streetlight worker. Unsure of what to do after high school, the Papillion native took a few classes at Metropolitan Community College. Nothing seemed to click.

Then he toured Metro’s line school campus in Irvington, with its poles and ropes and trucks and power tools. Why not become a line technician? His father, Todd, already worked at OPPD as a transportation mechanic.

“I thought, ‘Hey, this looks really cool,’” he said.

Pinegar attended line school on Saturdays, which allowed him to work full-time at a tree-trimming and lawn-care company to support himself.

He interviewed with small electrical cooperatives and contractors and scored an internship at Lincoln Electric System in Lincoln. Then he tried out for OPPD’s streetlighter boot camp and got an offer.

Change of plans

Pinegar figured he’d eventually transfer to OPPD’s line department. But the more experience he gained as a streetlight worker, the more the job seemed to fit.

When the opportunity arose to test at OPPD’s line technician boot camp, he decided to stay.

“I realized I really enjoyed it,” he said. “Ninety percent of it is enjoying the people you work with. We have good guys, so that makes it fun. We have our morning meeting, but after that you can shape your workday the way you want it, as long as you get your work done.”

Plus, the job required a lot of the same skills. Streetlight workers respond to customer calls just as other field workers do. Like line technicians and troubleshooters, they’re trained to climb poles, operate bucket trucks and perform highly technical electrical work.

Most streetlight workers start as a three-year apprentice and learn on the job, gaining experience and earning gradual pay increases as they progress toward journeyman status.

Ensuring public safety

When big storms cause a major outage, streetlight workers jump into the field to help restore power as quickly and efficiently as possible.

As members of the “wires down” team, along with meter and substation technicians, streetlight workers power through 16-hour shifts to inspect storm-damaged areas ahead of line crews and see what needs to be done. When possible, they restore power to individual homes so that line crews can focus on repairing larger distribution lines and poles.

They also verify reports of fallen lines. Is the downed wire a primary, secondary, house service, or a cable line? A cable line might be harmless. An electrified primary line can kill you.

“We do it for public safety,” said Jerry Webster, field supervisor for Transmission & Distribution at OPPD’s Elkhorn Service Center. “When we get wires down calls, it could be anything.”

Streetlight workers also deal with some unpleasantries in their roadside work. Some drivers are reckless and rude. Heavy traffic is a challenge. For the most part, Pinegar said, people are nice.

Sometimes, streetlight wires run underground, which requires squeezing into tight spaces. Or they might be buried in a thick, gnarled, overgrown mess of tree branches.

Vehicles hitting poles is a big problem. Sometimes, streetlight workers will replace or repair a pole, only to see it damaged again a few weeks later.

“People hit those things like it’s going out of style,” Pinegar said.

Streetlight workers have plenty to do

OPPD’s nine-man street lighting team has plenty of daily calls and no shortage of work, Webster said. The load only increases after big storms.

OPPD right now has about three times the typical number of streetlight outages across its 13-county service territory, due to the high number of damaging storms this year.

“You’ve got to be pretty organized,” Webster said. “The level of work isn’t going down. You’ve got to be able to work in the weather, just like any of the other crafts or trades. And you’ve got to be mechanically inclined, good with your hands.”

Streetlight work is a great entry point for potential OPPD employees, Webster said. Some streetlighters decide to stay in the department, while others move to different jobs.

“I tell people, if you want to try for a line job or anything else, just let us know,” Webster said. “We’ll send you over to job shadow and work with them a while and get some experience. We like to encourage growth and development for all our employees.”

Webster said his current team works very well together and has gelled nicely.

“It’s a fun group and they get along really well,” he said. “Their knowledge of the Omaha metro will just astound you.”

‘We’re serving the community’

Jose Maes, streetlight working crew leader, joined OPPD 15 years ago after a career in the U.S. Air Force that took him all over the world, including the Middle East and Afghanistan, and on domestic humanitarian missions to help citizens after Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina.

Maes learned about the utility industry after one of his troops became a line technician in Florida. While working at Offutt Air Force Base, Maes encountered OPPD and NPPD at a job fair and decided to apply.

“I like working outdoors and working with people,” Maes said. “OPPD appealed to me because it’s like the service. We’re serving the community.”

He joined OPPD with plans to become a line technician, but during an internship in 2009, a job came open in the street lighting department.

“Once I joined the OPPD team, I realized the street lighting department was a good fit for me,” he said. “I never get bored with what I’m doing.”

High expectations

Maes said OPPD’s requirements to become a streetlighter – earning an accredited line degree, a commercial driver’s license and succeeding in the boot camp – created a cohesive, well-trained group. In previous years, employees sometimes arrived with no formal training or experience and learned on the job.

Public expectations are high as well.

“In Omaha, customers expect to have the lights working,” he said. “If you drive around other parts of the country, one will notice that many communities are not as well lit. People in Omaha like to have lights for public safety. They expect it.”