With the wind whipping as he talked over the phone, Braden Scarlett waited to see where his crew would go to restore power after Hurricane Florence.

The 2012 Brownstown Central High School graduate is an apprentice lineman for Chattanooga, Tennessee-based Service Electric Co.

On Friday morning, he was in Greensboro, North Carolina, about 200 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

Florence at one point was a Category 4 storm but now is a Category 1. The storm made landfall Friday morning.

According to the National Hurricane Center, a Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph. The very dangerous winds will produce some damage, including roof, shingles, vinyl siding and gutter damage on homes, shallowly rooted trees snapped or uprooted and extensive damage to power lines and poles likely will result in power outages that could last a few to several days.

“It’s pretty calm. It’s overcast. It’s starting to rain, and the wind is starting to pick up, but we’re not really receiving much where we’re at,” he said of Friday morning in Greensboro.

In the eastern part of the state, though, he said he heard more than 300,000 people were without power.

Scarlett said Service Electric is now working on Duke Energy property. Once it’s determined what power lines and towers are down, workers will go there to help restore everything.

“They’ve got real high fault currents here because of all of the mountains,” Scarlett said. “Everything is so overloaded.”

On Friday, Scarlett said he and the other members of a transmission crew were in a hotel. After that, they planned to be staged in tent cities, which are rows of tents with cots inside.

“It’s pretty rough, but we get compensated pretty well for it,” he said.

Scarlett said he expects to be working a lot of hours in the coming weeks, most likely 16 hours a day.

“It’s probably one of the most dangerous jobs in the world,” he said of being a lineman. “You’re working with anywhere from 7,200 volts to 300,000 to 700,000 volts. It’s very dangerous because you’re working with high electricity. The problem with hurricanes is working with everything that is broken and you don’t know if it’s hot. We take a lot of precautions.”

Last year, he said he helped restore power after Hurricane Irma, which CNN says is the strongest Atlantic basin hurricane ever recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. It lasted as a hurricane from Aug. 31 to Sept. 11, stretched 650 miles from east to west and affected at least nine states, CNN reported.

Scarlett still lives in Brownstown and has worked in Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida.

“I travel where the work is. I have a house in Indiana, but that’s about it,” he said. “If there’s a big job in California, I’ll go to California. You never know, really.”

Despite having a dangerous job, Scarlett said he loves the work.

“I can’t get enough of it,” he said. “Most of the people you work with, they are all coming down here (to North Carolina) and working and helping, and you make some good money doing it.”

Peyton Sitterding, a cousin and high school classmate of Scarlett, now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is three hours from the coast.

“I was impacted slightly but nothing like they are currently near the coast,” Sitterding said. “I really only witnessed our gas stations running out of gas, increase in gas prices and grocery stores running out of water.”

She recently returned home to Brownstown.

“My apartment continues to send out alerts in case of power outages or floods, but I came home for the weekend and won’t be returning until Sunday, Lord willing, as long as the worst has moved through,” Sitterding said.

Another Jackson County resident is concerned about the damage the hurricane could leave behind.

Amy Stepp of Crothersville was in North Carolina a lot when her brother, Kenny Stepp, served in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years. Kenny now lives in Hanover, but he still has a house in Jacksonville, North Carolina, from when he was stationed at Camp Lejeune.

“North Carolina has been a second home away from home for us. It hurts, to say the least,” Amy said. “Pictures and videos are definitely heartbreaking, let alone watching beaches my kids have played on be destroyed. Topsail and Emerald are two beaches we visited quite a bit.”

She said she has a few friends and other people she grew close to who still live there.

“Onslow (County) went under mandatory evacuation, but at that point, there was no going anywhere for a lot of them,” she said. Jacksonville is the county seat.

Amy said she, Kenny and her sister-in-law are considering heading to North Carolina on Wednesday, depending on how bad Kenny’s house gets damaged. If it does get damaged, Amy said they will check on it and the people who are renting it and also see where and how they can help for a few days.

“We know our way around well and such, and the place means a lot, so whatever we possibly can,” she said.