Bart Chapman works to keep Morganton powered, one day at a time

For the city’s Electric Services Supervisor Bart Chapman, keeping the lights on for Morganton residents and businesses has been his goal each day for the past 27 years.

It’s one that often requires working around the clock, demanding physical work, and comes with a lot of unpredictability from one day to the next. For Chapman, who leads a crew of 12, a large part of his leadership means making sure his employees feel appreciated.

From reeling in fish to serving them up to his employees, Chapman blends his passion for fishing with his drive to make sure his team is rewarded for its hard work.

As the summer storm season is underway, Chapman and his crews have been staying prepared and working long hours to make sure the community has power, and if power is lost, that it won’t be gone for long. With decades of service to the City of Morganton, Chapman shared the ins and outs of his day-to-day work and his passions outside of work.

How did you get started with the City of Morganton and what has kept you here?

I’m from Burke County and I’ve been with the city a little over 27 years. I’ve grown up here all my life, played sports, went to Freedom High School, Glen Alpine elementary and junior high. I started out as a lineman and then worked my way up to supervisor.

There was a guy here when I first got here. He was a tree trimmer, and I looked up to him. He taught me a lot about tree trimming. We had some good times. I always thought if you’re going to work at a place, you might as well do your best to be the highest you can be. I worked my way up and tried to learn all I could.

Even today, if I need to get in the ditch, I’ll get in the ditch to do something. If I need to get in the bucket, I’ll get in the bucket. Whatever’s got to be done, I jump in there.

What does your job look like day to day, and how do you lead your crew?

Day to day, usually I have to go ahead and plan it out a couple days before, meet with contractors, schedule days up with those when we can come in on their job sites, and what power we’re putting in.

Then I designate a couple crews of how many men I need for each job, and I may split some up, send just a couple there that day, and then send a couple more to another job, and just make sure they got all the materials when they go to the job. I try to stay ahead of the work schedule because depending on the weather, that has a lot to do with which jobs we do.

What was it like working through Hurricane Helene, and how did your crew handle it?

Every station went down. I ended up a lot of days working from 18 to 20 hours, 10 days straight, and we had a lot of out-of-town mutual aid come help us. We had quite a few cities, and if we hadn’t had them, we’d have been out of power for a whole lot longer.

As soon as that Friday rolled around, I said we already need help. I’d seen enough before the storm even rolled out. I’m glad we went ahead and asked for help because it’d been harder to get help as many people had damage.

The main goal was to make sure you’ve got your water and sewer plant running. The next thing is to make sure you’ve got your hotels and restaurants for people coming up and to get food and everything. Then, you start concentrating on your biggest part of the outage that you can get fixed with the least work.

After 27 years with the city, what have you learned, and what has been the most rewarding?

So much. Every day is a learning curve. In electrical, you don’t ever quit learning. You always see something that you’ve never seen before, and you just gotta make a note in the back of your head and remember.

The most rewarding is knowing that people have power and seeing the lights come on.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I like to do crappie fishing, walleye fishing, and striper fishing. I go to Fontana Lake near Cherokee, Lake Murray in South Carolina, and Clark Hill Lake near the Georgia and South Carolina border.

I also like to cook a lot. I do fish fries for the guys at work. One day we went down to the recreation center, and they had stripers, crappies, shrimp, potatoes, slaw, coconut cake, and hushpuppies. I just try to show a little appreciation.