When Hurricane Helene roared ashore, it didn’t just topple power lines—it upended lives. Streets became canals; homes became splintered memories. Entire neighborhoods were plunged into darkness, leaving residents powerless and struggling to survive.
Enter Eric Brelinski, a lineman from DTE Energy’s Mount Clemens office, who packed his skills and his heart to join the effort to restore power and a sense of normalcy to a battered and shattered community.
Eric and seven teammates—two four-person crews—drove down to Georgia, where the devastation and chaos left in Helene's wake made live wires almost as ubiquitous as worms. “This was the biggest storm I was ever involved with,” Eric declares." I wonder what makes him call it the biggest. “The widespread damage,” Eric responds.
Eric and his teammates were part of “a big convoy down 75" to Augusta. There, Eric describes a vast concrete area “just covered in line trucks—a huge, huge operation. We’d come in from the day’s work, and there were so many trucks they had cops directing traffic.”
Where did they sleep?
“Trailers upon trailers with bunk beds,” Eric answers. “It was a makeshift camp: showers, people doing laundry, a tent to get food in the morning and when you came in at night. And that was it.”
That was Eric’s home for two weeks. What were the conditions like for him?
“It’s not time for us to be comfortable,” Eric replies. “We’re down there to help people get somewhat back to normal."
I ask Eric to describe how not normal the scene he encountered was. Eric recalls the hour-long drive from base camp to job site.
“Destruction everywhere,” he remembers. “Huge, huge trees just uprooted, pushed over on the houses—the entire drive. It was so vast. Imagine driving for an hour and seeing that. It was pretty overwhelming.”
I ask him to compare a major storm here to what he saw in Georgia.
“Here,” Eric says, “we might get some broken poles, some wires down. There, it was poles and poles and poles, just snapped off or pushed right over, all in a row.”
Eric and his team didn’t just work; they talked with the residents.
“We were trying to uplift them. We're all in this together,” Eric recalls. “We would stop everything and say, ‘We’re going to get you guys on today.’ And some of these people…well, they were really, really happy.” One resident told Eric 100-mph winds engulfed her home for six hours.
Eric recalls one area where 15 poles in a row had been snapped off. “Wires, transformers—everything’s on the ground,” Eric describes. The Mount Clemens crews, he reports proudly, restored that entire area in less than two days: "it was a heck of an accomplishment for eight guys.
Did they celebrate the milestone?
“No, no,” he responds. “We just kept going. Each day was like that. These people were through a lot—we knew they were struggling. So we just stuck together, worked safe and just got as many people on as we could, man.”
The band of brothers did get small chances to bond.
“Picture these trailers ten feet apart,” Eric explains. “There’s an aisleway between the trailers. A bunch of us would sit around and talk about what we saw. Because everybody's going through the same thing. They're seeing the devastation. It was really beneficial for everybody.
“And then driving to the work down there, you really get to know that person. The guy I drove with, I knew who he was, but now I really know him, you know what I mean?”
In restoring the area’s power, Eric was part of a different kind of power: teamwork.
“To the people of Mount Clemens: you can work together to do whatever task needs to be done,” Eric declares. "A bunch of people together can accomplish a lot.”
When he arrived home, Eric was surprised to get a hero’s welcome.
“My three daughters, they drew me this big poster of leads with poles and line trucks and, “Thank you, dad, for what you do.’ Just brought me to tears.”
Eric’s back to enjoying The Engine House and Louie’s with his co-workers at lunchtimes. I ask what he took away from the experience.
“I was glad I was there—very glad,” Eric reflects. “Not because of what happened, but because of what I knew what we could accomplish—and we did, all pulling together. That’s the greatest feeling. Seeing the lights come on for those people, after what they had been through, you just…”
Eric trails off, moved. “You can't top that.”
"Seeing the lights come on for those people, after what they'd been through…you can't top that.”
“Destruction everywhere—the entire drive. Imagine driving for an hour and seeing that. It was so vast."