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Discover how Tri-State and our members are embracing the opportunity to power the West in our new podcast, Western Watts!
We'll dive into the heart of energy issues, from reliability to wildfire mitigation, and share firsthand insights relevant to rural, agricultural and mountain communities across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
This podcast may contain certain forward looking statements concerning Tri-State's plans, performance, and strategies. Actual results may differ materially because of numerous factors, and Tri-State undertakes no obligation to update these forward looking statements. We urge you to review Tri-State's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of these factors.
Adrian Garcia:I think the one thing about the industry that surprised people is the amount of work that they don't see. Right? A lot of times, we do a lot of bare hand work. My name is Adrian Garcia. I'm the central crew line foreman based out of Rio Rancho.
Melissa Swinehart:How long have you been with Tri-State?
Adrian Garcia:I've been at Tri-State for going on twenty one and a half years. Came from Sequoia Electric, is one of our co op members. Started with them in '97. Worked for them till 2004. And then it was when Tri-State hired me.
Adrian Garcia:I'm going on sixteen years as a central crew life for me. Back then though, it was only two crews. So it was north and south. I used to have the whole north, everything from Rio Rancho north to the Colorado border. Then a few years later, they played us into three crews and became the north, central, and south.
Melissa Swinehart:You started with Socorro , and then you went to Tri-State. Was it something about the cooperative make it appealing?
Adrian Garcia:I didn't know much about Tri-State back then, but I would see some of the sub guys come into the subs, and sometimes I'd run into them and got to talking to them and just found out more about Tri-State, and that sounded more appealing at that time. So that's when I applied and got the job.
Melissa Swinehart:And where are you based out of?
Adrian Garcia:Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Melissa Swinehart:We're heading to Hatch area today. And what is this again?
Adrian Garcia:We're working on the Frontier To Picacho 115 kV line. There's over 120 structures that we've been having to change out. And right now we're headed to the far end at the Frontier sub, which is the furthest point of where we began from town. We lack 10 structures in town and we only lack 20 structures to do out here by the substation.
Melissa Swinehart:How many crews are working on this one again?
Adrian Garcia:Right now we got two crews working on it. We went twelve days on, two days off, and then came back this go around for another twelve days. The first stint we had three crews working, and then on this go around we only got two crews working.
Melissa Swinehart:And how many hours a day are you working?
Adrian Garcia:We're working twelve to thirteen hours a day, starting at six in the morning, and then usually getting back by 06:30, seven, 07:30 at night. Leave in the dark and come home in the dark.
Melissa Swinehart:What do you like best about working in New Mexico or even just your job?
Adrian Garcia:I guess just the weather. We got the best of both worlds. Like Northern New Mexico has all the mountains, and then you got Southern New Mexico as the high desert. You got a wide variety of the elements. If it's terrible up north, then we try to plan our work down south.
Adrian Garcia:And when it's too hot down here in the summertime, we try to schedule our work up north where it's a lot cooler.
Melissa Swinehart:I didn't even think of it. Like how hot? Are you out there working on jobs when it's under?
Adrian Garcia:Yeah, because down here it'll get over a 100, a 105, a 110. And usually up north when it's that year, it's usually eighties, nineties, the most up there. Then on a typical winter, like up north, you know, it's gonna be below freezing. And then down here, a lot of times it'll be in forties or fifties, typically. A lot more mild.
Melissa Swinehart:Do you live in Las Cruces?
Adrian Garcia:I live in Rio Rancho.
Melissa Swinehart:Do you have family back in Rio Rancho then?
Adrian Garcia:My brother and sister both live there. I got a wife and three kids.
Melissa Swinehart:Oh, you live in Rio Rancho? You guys all basically stay in the motel. Get the job done. What do you do on the weekends then?
Adrian Garcia:Yeah. We we work through the week because we've been going twelve days straight, basically twelve on, two off from the beginning of this job and then till it ends.
Melissa Swinehart:And are these jobs planned out? Yeah. Like, you knew this was coming.
Adrian Garcia:Yeah. They're planned out way in advance. Usually, got at least a year or so you know it's coming. Year, we had our Len Bernardo job that was at the same time as this one. That one went from January 1 till the end of March.
Melissa Swinehart:That's a long time.
Adrian Garcia:Yeah. That one was more we had to pull fiber in and this was no wire. It's just structures, but a lot of these jobs too, they require pulling new wire in as well.
Melissa Swinehart:Is that just because they're old, or are you pulling new wire because they're new line?
Adrian Garcia:No. It's just because they're old.
Melissa Swinehart:Was that the line that you're working on you guys are working on now is, like, an older
Adrian Garcia:Yeah.
Melissa Swinehart:How old are they? I know some of them have been, like, forty, fifty years.
Adrian Garcia:Some of these were built in the forties.
Melissa Swinehart:Is the power out then?
Adrian Garcia:Right now, we're doing it under a clearance.
Melissa Swinehart:What does that mean?
Adrian Garcia:Not an outage. A lot of these lines, they're loop beds, so we can just reroute the power from another direction. We do have a lot of especially up north where they're just the radio lines, so you got to work it hot.
Melissa Swinehart:Really? I know that. Loop lines you don't have to, or does that just mean there's a way around?
Adrian Garcia:There's a loop so you can de energize a section of line and it'll get fed from another direction. We're running two crews down here now for this portion of it. Two weeks ago, we had three crews, A crew from Durango came down to make another crew. He brought guys from Cheyenne and we had guys from Pueblo.
Melissa Swinehart:When did you say you'd be done with this project?
Adrian Garcia:Hopefully around the thirtieth. We started January 5. It's been twelve, thirteen hour days.
Melissa Swinehart:So do the crews get overtime?
Adrian Garcia:That's what keeps them motived. I think in the real world, people don't really know what we do. Sounds like we're like the unsung heroes, firefighters, police officers get all this not to, you know, downgrade what they do, but nobody knows exactly what we do when the lights go out. I used to say it all the time, people would see us in the coffee shops or at the restaurants. But at 02:00 this morning, when the lights were out, I bet you didn't see us then in the freezing rain and snow.
Melissa Swinehart:Well, I think that's exactly it. Even you saying, okay, we're working twelve, fourteen hour days. I'm like, holy crap. That's so long to be out working. And especially for your type of job, you have to be on and really alert.
Adrian Garcia:It's physically challenging. It ain't easy on the body.
Melissa Swinehart:And yes, unsung heroes because paramedics are taking people or the hospitals that need the power on so that they can help people. It's all connected. What's one thing about this industry that would surprise people?
Adrian Garcia:I think the one thing about the industry that surprised people is the amount of work that they don't see. A lot of times we do a lot of bare hand work, and so we actually get energized to the same potential as the wire. So if we're working on 345,000 volt line, our bodies become energized at that potential. Obviously the current don't flow through us because it's like a bird on a wire. So you're isolated in your bucket.
Adrian Garcia:I don't think a lot of people realize that we are working on the lines just because they just have electricity.
Melissa Swinehart:You have to have a lot of trust in the equipment and probably your crew.
Adrian Garcia:Yeah. Watching each other's back. You set up the trucks properly because we got meters that alarms that go off. You gotta have confident people who knows how to set them up, what to put the thresholds on, how to test them properly, test your suits, your bare hand suits.
Melissa Swinehart:What is a bare hand suit?
Adrian Garcia:It's a pants, like a jacket, a hood, and gloves, and special linings in them. Electricity pretty much goes not through you, but all around you when you're isolated in the bucket.
Melissa Swinehart:Can you feel that? Does your hair stand on end?
Adrian Garcia:Sometimes it does. I don't think you're supposed to feel it, but there's certain times where you're bonded to the bucket and everything's bonded together inside the bucket. And then when you're going up, you bond onto the wires. You're going to be the same potential, so you shouldn't feel anything, but there is times that you feel like you got ants crawling on you.
Melissa Swinehart:That's crazy.
Adrian Garcia:One of the weirdest things that's happened to us during our job, and it's not so much job related, but heading out to the job site and you roll up on accidents. Not very long ago, we rolled up on a rollover that had just happened. The card was on its side. We were the first people to drive up and the guy had just called out and he said his wife was still in there trapped. I had to call 911.
Adrian Garcia:Colby went over there, helped pull her out, make sure they were all right, waited for the ambulance to get there. And then we went and did our job that we were going to do that day. And we were coming back out and the wreck was still there. They had us pull the car back over onto all fours so the wrecker could get it loaded up and towed away.
Melissa Swinehart:Wow. Talk about concern for community. You guys are like basically first responders then.
Adrian Garcia:Then, the stuff we do, it's not just maintenance on the line. We do our own right of ways. We run bulldozers. We do our own vegetation management. We have mulchers and forestry heads, chainsaws.
Adrian Garcia:We cut the trees down, mulch them, chip them. There's just so much to it that goes on besides the typical lineman stuff, line work.
Melissa Swinehart:Is the variety nice?
Adrian Garcia:That's what makes it exciting and fun. You never do the same thing.
Speaker 4:Thanks for tuning into Western Watts. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or on our website at tristate.coop/wwpod. We'll catch you next time.