BATON ROUGE, La. (LEX 18) — A Lincoln County man is one of several Kentuckians who were sent to Louisiana to help with storm damage caused by Hurricane Laura.
Alan Gambrel already has experience helping with the aftermath of severe weather.
“This will be my third storm I’ve been on,” said Gambrel. “I came down here three years ago for Hurricane Irma. We were in Georgia then. Then last year we went to Florida.”
So, he knew what to do when he and other employees at Kendall Vegetation Services had to quickly pack up and head out to Louisiana to help with storm damage. He and other Kentuckians arrived Wednesday and are now staying at a motel east of Baton Rouge.
“I’ve been outside here for about an hour right now and there’s a siren going off,” said Gambrel. “You can hear it off in the distance. It’s probably gone off ten or twelve times.”
He says they’re on standby, waiting for the storm to calm before they can head out to affected areas. Their job is to help clear fallen trees and debris off power lines.
"We'll go in. The linemen will make sure the lines are dead, make sure there isn't power in the lines. We'll go in and cut the tree off the power lines and the linemen will come in and put the power lines back up and we'll go on to the next block,” he said. “It could be an all-day mess or a five-minute job.”
Even a five-minute job though makes a difference during severe weather, and Gambrel knows that.
“I take pride in my work no matter what I do,” he said. “You know, when you’re doing something good, you can’t help but feel good.”
While he was told they expect to leave Friday, he’s ready to stay or move to another location as needed.
