Rain is falling in sheets across the street from a busy Department of Motor Vehicles office in Westminster as Southern California Edison foreman Matt Bernhardt arrives in his truck, ready to get to work. His five-man crew is assigned to repair damaged primary connectors on a power pole that sits at the intersection of two distribution circuits, making them abnormal.

The job can’t wait for the rain to stop because restoring the connection will provide critical flexibility in redirecting power load to avoid storm-related outages.

“We need options to be able to shift load around, and each circuit has limited capacity. This work is all tied to reliability for our customers,” said Scott Todd, SCE’s Huntington Beach district manager.

But the rain makes the job much tougher and presents additional safety hazards.

“We’ll be making the repairs with the line energized,” said Tim Patterson, a journeyman lineman on Bernhardt’s crew. “Normally, we would do the work using primary rubber gloves, but because of the rain, we must use our hot sticks.” Hot sticks are tools that allow lineworkers to perform a wide range of tasks while remaining a safe distance from energized equipment.

Patterson and fellow journeyman lineman Ryan Davidson are hoisted into position by an SCE bucket truck and work safely to remove the connector, which has been burned by excessive heat. They replaced it and discovered that two additional connectors at the site — though still functional — also needed to be replaced.

The repair order is completed in about an hour, including the time it takes for a traffic control contractor to put out signs and cones to keep the crew and the public safe.

SCE is responding to a mutual assistance request from other California power companies, sending 23 contractor crews to Pacific Gas & Electric and six to Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Though the brunt of the storm is expected to move through SCE’s service area Monday, more rain and possible thunderstorms are expected through Wednesday. Crews will continue to be ready to respond for needed repairs and outages, which have so far been modest, peaking at about 17,000 of SCE’s 5 million customers impacted late Sunday night.

To check on the status or report an outage, visit sce.com/outagemap.