by Martha Rose Woodward
Ed Hurley of Advanced Electric said that the recent storms brought both good and bad news. Good news in that he is busier than ever; bad in that many people have electrical problems.
Hurley, who has worked in the electrical business for over 35 years, said that last fall and winter were hard times. “We barely had enough work to keep us going,” he said. “But, when that storm hit with all the hail damage and stuff, boy, that gave a lot of people a lot of electrical problems.”
Hurley said that his company has been full of work since that time. He rarely gets a day off. The storms that rolled through last week set his phone to ringing off the wall again.
Hurley is a licensed, bonded, certified electrician who has all the certificates he needs in order to do any kind of job needed. He often works for contractors and that has been a large part of his business.
He said that when the housing market tanked, plumbers, painters and electricians saw a nose dive in their work load, too. Hurley said it was a huge adjustment to go from being overly busy to not having enough work.
“When people need an electrician they need one bad and now,” he said. “No one wants us to have to say that we will get to them one day next week. But, that is what we have to say some of the time.”
Hurley said he has often stopped one job to respond to an emergency. “I am not going to leave babies and children without power,” he said. “I’ll go and check it out and do what I can to get the power back on, but sometimes I can’t fix the problem in a few hours.”
Hurley said he recently had a job where the house was hit by lightning. He said when he got the call about it, he was in Lake City, TN. “Not much I could do from that distance,” he said. “All I could do was tell them I would get there as soon as I could. It was a big mess. Their electrical box was fried and you could see where the lightning went up into the second story of the house. It was bad. Two of us were there for three days. Once we got the outside box replaced, we started on the inside of the house. There was not a plug in that house that didn’t have damage. They are very lucky their house didn’t burn down,” he said.
Hurley said he works in all parts of this area in both Knox and surrounding counties. His phone number is 865 679 7474.
