Correct Bazza. While it can be a fuse, 2 miles down or up the road you could have 3 poles down with wire everywhere that people don't get to see.
Here is how restoration generally works:
1. Transmission lines have to be rode out first or there is no use in trying to fix anything. One downed phase on a vital transmission line can have a whole city out for a while depending on how quick it is found. This is done by helicopter, trucks, ATV's, etc. The transmission lines run from generation station to substations.
2. Hospitals, hotels, businesses that could be vital for life and/or could be vital for the community (like grocery stores, etc.)
3. Next you try to restore the biggest number of outages (meaning most meters per circuit) per outage. It would take forever to worry about one home or business (sadly) when the same amount of time fixing another outage could cut on 3,000 people instead of 3 people. Also in this group are the medical emergencies if at all possible. In the industry this is called fixing/repairing feeders which are generally on the main roads or into big communities.
4. Then we go to the taps which pull off the feeders, which then again kind of goes off the numbers game yet again. A tap or lateral as called in the trade, pull off the feeder and generally runs off side roads. For instance if you live in Highway 119, that feeder will be fixed before say your lateral on Johnson Road that pulls off Highway 119.
5. Then is the final sweep. It goes from pot/transformer to the house. If the house mast is pulled off the house then there is no chance of getting power until you call an electrician and have it fixed first. This can take a long time as it's more of a house to house (or call to call) deal to investigate. This is generally where people get hostile because their house has been out all week while a neighbor might have had power. Many issues can cause this, as the neighbor could be on a different circuit, tap or feeder than the other. That's something else the public doesn't really know about yet. Also another problem is many people confuse cable/phone lines for the utilities and this can take up a LOT of the investigating that could be used somewhere else.
That is the main thing to remember though. Just because you can walk outside and not see damage doesn't mean it's not there. You can even drive around and not see a truck but the line could run 4 miles into the woods down the road that feeds your circuit and you would never know they were there working. Trust me, sometimes we dread working 16+ hours a day in towns and cities where there is nothing but work and ticked off folks. A lot of those times we are away from our family and staying in the same miserable conditions the families are. I too slept in trailers, trucks, floors of gyms and in hotels with no power myself and still work the same amount or more hours. That's what people don't see.
Now about the story, there is fault to go around on everyone in my mind. To me the first being the nursing home for NOT having back up power. There is a reason hospitals have emergency generators ready to go at any time. Second, FPL is always horrible at getting orders out to crews and put them to work. I've worked 2 weeks there before and all I did was straighten out a leaning pole and changed out one bad transformer in 2 whole weeks. We could do that before lunch most days. They pretty much had no clue the West Coast of Florida was going to be affected like it was after Irma came on shore. They had us stationed in what they thought was out of the way only to have the eye go right over us. So they definitely deserve some blame too. FPL was really in the right for telling them to prepare for a week of more without power because everyone involved thought it was going to be really worse than it was, but FPL has to take blame as well for taking things slow as usual.
And it sucks because sometimes we take the brunt of their frustrations because people might see us in the truck sleeping in a Wal-Mart parking lot, but there is truly nothing we can do until companies like FPL give us work orders. If we took off to work where we wanted when we wanted then it would be nothing but chaos, that is truly what gets linemen and ground hands killed. Matter of fact last year during Irma, I had a crew from Ohio working (I won't say which utility it was) across the road from me and instead of riding the line out they just threw a switch in, in hopes it would hold. That's one of the biggest no-no's in the game, you ALWAYS ride the line out and see what is wrong. Not only can you hurt someone or some kids down the line who have no clue the line is down on their fence, but you can hurt your own guy for throwing in the switch even with an extendo stick (long yellow stick you'll see us use from the ground sometimes) as I've seen switches blow up ceramic and all and injure the person on the ground. Luckily as I ran across the road quickly to confront them and ask what happened the foreman told me and I was just happy I wasn't having to help get someone down or God forbid start CPR. But that type of thing can show you just how quickly things can become chaotic for us...
