Linemen and electrical engineers worked around the clock to return power to Oxford and the University of Mississippi campus as quickly as possible after experiencing historical damage from Winter Storm Fern in January.
Shedd Castle is an Oxford native and a lineman with Oxford Utilities who has been working on lines damaged by the ice storm since Jan. 31.
“We showed up that Saturday before the storm, and we were on standby to take outages and stuff,” Castle said. “They got to me about 7 o’clock that evening. The city provided us a hotel and fed us. About 10 o’clock at night, my phone rang, and we had our first outage. And we tried to work outages ‘til about 4 o’clock that morning.”
The damage to power lines was so extensive, Castle said, that the crew was working 14 to 15 hours a day for 12 days straight.
While being a lineman is a notoriously difficult and dangerous job, Castle said that he started in the line of work because he genuinely loves it.
“I thought it was cool,” Castle said. “It allows me to work outdoors. I wanted a career that … allowed me more freedom outside.”
Castle completed his six-year-long lineman training in 2021 and then worked with the Water Valley Electric Department for two years before moving to Oxford Utilities. Despite training and working as a lineman for over a decade, Castle said that working during the storm is different than anything he has encountered before.
“It was a lot different for us, because (with) our utility (service), we typically know what’s going on,” Castle said. “Whenever you have 150 people all helping, plus tree crews, you have to communicate. It is just a lot of logistics behind it, because you don’t want anyone to get hurt, right? I think the ice made it twice as difficult, because there were places we couldn’t access, even with four-wheel-drive trucks. You try to go up a hill, solid sheet ice, and it was just inaccessible.”
The scene that Castle saw while working during the storm was also different from his typical work.
“Trees were falling in the distance, and it almost looked like the Aurora lights,” Castle said. “Seeing lines falling down, it looked like explosions. It honestly was just the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. My foreman, about 4 o’clock, he said, ‘This is too dangerous. We just have to call it for the night before someone gets hurt.’”
While he was working on lines, Castle’s wife, Mary Castle, stayed at their house without power for five days.
“It’s what I signed up for,” Shedd Castle said. “I knew that was part of the job when I applied for it. She understands, she took care of the house … and was amazing through it, but my job demands are to work storms, be on call, be away from my family, be gone for several days and that’s just what comes with it.”
Mary Castle also supported her husband through prayer.
“I’d be at the hotel room, she’d be at the house without power,” Shedd Castle said. “(At every) chance, she prayed for the safety of me and the people I worked with.”
Her faith kept her grounded while her husband was out working.
“Updates that Oxford Utilities and the mayor would put out on Facebook (helped me while he was gone),” Mary Castle said. “He, of course, shares his location with me, so I could look it up and just see where he was in Oxford, even though I couldn’t talk to him, (and) obviously, faith. I knew that the Lord’s will would play out with how he wanted it, and I trusted that he would protect them.”
While Shedd Castle is part of the team that restored power to Oxford, he also emphasized how the process has been made possible by the entire community.
“(I want to) just emphasize how grateful Oxford Utilities is as a whole and how supportive the community was,” Shedd Castle said. “They provided us with whatever we needed. We had resources. People took time away from their families and got out there to just give us hot coffee. I work with an awesome group of people that put (in) as much effort (as they could), and this entire community came together to restore the lights.”
