SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – On Wednesday, Five Electric Cooperative Crews in South Dakota made their way down to South Carolina to help victims of Hurricane Helene.

Dakota News Now caught up with them before they started their trip.

Twenty men are making their way to Pickens, South Carolina in the Northwest part of the state about 30 minutes away from North Carolina.

As challenging as this adjustment can be, the task at hand is what motivated them.

The crews were notified yesterday by the South Dakota Rural Electric Association that they will be embarking on this twelve-hundred-mile trip.

“About all we know is we’re going to Pickens South Carolina to assist a cooperative there, they told us to be ready to be gone for about two weeks,” Mike Oines, Sioux Valley Electric Lead Journey Line said.

Since Tuesday, the crews have had to make sure business is in order in South Dakota and for this trip, Transmission Superintendent Wade Bialas said his guys are ready for anything.

“We’re just going in there trying to make the situation better, try to help lend a helping hand, it’s always nice having that feeling knowing you’re coming in from the outside, coming in to help and most of the time people are very grateful,” Bialas said.

They’re expecting to work in all kinds of terrains, from swamps to mountainous regions.

“Sounds like a lot of trees fell down because of the winds of the hurricane, took down the wire, so clearing trees, putting wire back up, maybe fixing a few poles,” Bialas said.

Hurricane Helene made landfall last Thursday as a Category 4 storm.

Earlier Wednesday, the Pickens area was visited by Senator Lindsay Graham and Congressman William Timmons.

The Crews are expected to be there for about two weeks, although that will change based on how long they’re needed.

In a news release Wednesday, XCEL Energy said they are sending crews to Georgia to help with recovery efforts there.

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GRAND FORKS, N.D. — It’s a blast from the past at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. The B-1 bomber returned, exactly 30 years after the last one left.

The beast of a plane, which guzzles a million gallons of gas a month, is helping Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota buy time.

“Ellsworth has to undergo a significant runway repair and upgrade, and in order to do that, they need to temporarily relocate their mission,” Col. Tim Monroe, a commander with the 319th Reconnaissance Wing at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, said Tuesday.

Ellsworth is getting ready to host a fleet of B-21 jets, but the Air Force needs the jets fueled and ready. Luckily, Grand Forks has a deep history of hosting B-1 bombers.

“This is not terribly new to us, but we do have to revisit a lot of basic principles of operating an aircraft like this because this installation, for many years, has operated unmanned systems,” Monroe said.

“Grand Forks quickly became one of the best options that popped up: its proximity to Ellsworth is one of its perks, additionally that it’s got a lot of B-1 infrastructure still existing here,” Lt. Col. Nathaniel Butler, the director of the Commander’s Action Group, said.

Specifically, the quality of the fuel lines and the runway at Grand Forks Air Force Base. The base has the potential to host many more of these, and several hundred airmen, as Ellsworth continues construction.

“It’s going to require some infrastructure updates to the installation, but it’s also going to require everybody to play nice and make sure that we are working cooperatively to sustain two wings’ missions from this base,” Monroe said.

“With every project there’s going to be problems, and some of them comes to funding, and a lot of it comes to contracting timelines, I don’t think that there’s anything that any one person can wave a magic wand and fix.” Butler said.

The Pentagon recently awarded the Grand Forks base more than $61 million dollars for renovation work.