Willow Grove, PA – More than 3,300 employees from Asplundh Tree Expert, LLC and its utility infrastructure subsidiaries from various locations across the United States have been deployed to Texas and Louisiana to help eight utilities restore power and services in the wake of Hurricane Laura. This mobilization occurred on the heels of sending about 2,000 people to the Midwest for the derecho storms and just more than 3,000 employees along the East Coast for Tropical Storm Isaias earlier in the month.
About 300 Asplundh tree workers began travelling on Sunday, August 23, from as far away as North Carolina to remove tree limbs and felled trees from roadways and power lines. Approximately 500 employees from Utility Lines Construction Services and Asplundh Construction started travelling on Monday, August 24, from as far as the Carolinas for line work restoration support. These crews are helping with damage assessment and rebuilding storm damaged distribution and transmission lines for the more than 870,000 utility customers reported to be without power throughout Texas and Louisiana. Currently, there are still approximately 1,600 tree workers and about 700 line workers on storm duty.
Asplundh’s Storm Coordination Team – based in Willow Grove, PA – will remain on duty to fulfill additional requests for crews and address logistics issues until all deployed crews have been released and returned to their home locations.
“We are very pleased to be able to support our customers and the general public in these multiple storm restoration efforts that have occurred in the last month,” said Chairman of the Board and CEO Scott Asplundh. “Of course, these efforts have been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, our personnel are well-versed in the practices to handle the spread of the virus. At this time, we are diligently working to perform restoration services in a safe manner to the impacted cities in Texas and Louisiana. I would like to thank all our responding crew personnel and management for their continued understanding to deal with these complex conditions as they perform their storm restoration duties.”
About Asplundh:
Asplundh Tree Expert, LLC is a family-owned and managed company, headquartered just outside of Philadelphia in Willow Grove, PA. It primarily provides vegetation management and utility infrastructure services to a wide range of utilities and municipalities. The Asplundh family of companies employs more than 33,000 men and women throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.