Neil Wright, of Lawrence, wrestled with tangled electric wires for about two weeks in Louisiana and slept in a bunkhouse made from an old semi’s trailer.

The Westar Energy lineman worked to turn the lights back on for Lake Charles, La., after Hurricane Rita damaged the city.

“The eerie thing was that Lake Charles is about the size of Lawrence, and the town was totally vacant,” Wright said. “It was just like a ghost town.”

The city in southwestern Louisiana experienced no flooding, he said, but the electrical infrastructure was hit hard.

“Practically every tree in town was damaged,” he said.

Wright has worked for Westar in Lawrence for 27 years, and he specializes in trying to fix power outages. He originally volunteered to work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit.

After a bus ride to Louisiana on Sept. 25, Hurricane Rita’s damage became evident, and supervisors sent the 28 Westar linemen from Kansas to Lake Charles instead, Wright said.

Neil Wright, a Westar Energy lineman for 27 years, worked in Lake Charles, La., for two weeks after Hurricane Rita. It

Westar has sent 127 employees to the Gulf Coast region to help Entergy and other utility companies restore power after the two hurricanes, said Karla Olsen, spokeswoman for Westar.

Also from Lawrence, Duane Noll and Cedar Taylor worked on the Gulf Coast as part of a group before Wright, and David Shockley and Todd Scheitel are now working in the area, Olsen said.

“They dropped us off and said, ‘Gentleman, you are 75 miles from electricity,'” Wright said.

Each day, Wright and his four-person crew went to work at 6 a.m. and started to repair power lines and fight through the fallen trees. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needed his crew’s help to restore the hospital’s power, he said.

For the first five days, nearly all residents were still gone, and the city’s main power source was still off, he said.

Then when evacuees started to return, the lights started to come back on, Wright said.

Westar Energy lineman Neil Wright, of Lawrence, witnessed plenty of scenes like this on a trip to Lake Charles, La., where he worked to restore electricity to the hurricane-damaged region.

“It was tough the first few days, but we finally got to see a little fruit from our labor: lights coming on,” he said. “That really kept me going.”

Despite severe damage to their property and city, the Lake Charles residents appreciated the employees’ work, he said.

Their work day lasted usually until sunset, and Wright and his crew returned to what they called Tent City, which was home to about 400 workers on the campus of McNeese State University. There they ate and slept in bunkhouses.

They were crammed into the old tractor trailers, but they slept in cool generator-powered air-conditioning, Wright said. He flew back home Saturday.

“We helped a lot of people get their lights back on, and the guys down there now are finishing up,” Wright said.