TURNING ON THE Co-ops’ humanitarian trip provides electricity to two remote Guatemalan villages for the first time
A team of 17 linemen from Ohio electric cooperatives traveled to Guatemala in March to bring electricity to two remote villages there.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY BRIAN E. BARR
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n a way, the scene was reminiscent of 1930s and ’40s rural America: two out-of-the-way villages getting electricity for the first time. This past March, however, the setting was a remote area of Central America, where a team of 17 linemen from Ohio electric cooperatives traveled to the villages of Las Tortugas and San Jorge, in northern Guatemala, on a humanitarian mission to supply electricity for the first time to the small villages.
The linemen, who hailed from 11 of Ohio’s co-ops, worked through sweltering heat on a 17-day journey to build lines, hang transformers, and wire homes for service
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OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • MAY 2018
alongside linemen from Empressa Municipal Rural de Electricidad (EMRE), the local electric distribution company, and several students from a local electrical trade school. About 20 men from the villages also assisted nearly every day. “The scope of the project was large and the adversity our guys faced on the project was unbelievable, but they overcame the odds and got it done,” says Dwight Miller, director of safety and loss control at Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, the statewide association that provides services to the 25 electric cooperatives in the state. Miller was the on-site manager of the project. “The team was simply amazing. Seeing the lights come on in those two villages allowed us to experience the same thing our
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