These guys are heroes to the people out of town who are relying on them to restore the power. They’re working their tails off to accomplish the task, too! Can you imagine standing on top of these towers and cranking power lines into place? Yikes!

There were still some wooden poles down, but I passed a lot of brand new ones and the crew which was replacing them. They’d obviously accomplished a lot in the area northwest of Mandan.

By the way, when one of those huge metal towers folds, there isn’t much you can do with it. The metal has been fatigued, so it’s time to replace the entire structure (aside from the pilings anchoring it to the ground). Once it’s dismantled and placed in a pile, it becomes obvious that there really isn’t a lot of metal in these things!

Imagine the force it took to twist and bend metal like this. Some of the damage was obviously due to the storm, the rest from cutting it into sections. Wow.

The landscape looks a bit different out there right now, as there are some places where the big metal towers are missing (for now). I poked around a bit west of Mandan to get my truck muddy and see what I could see, and there were crews working diligently to make sure that the lights come back on…one tower at a time.