Alliant Energy crews from across Iowa traveled to Gulfport, Miss. Saturday to lend a hand in power restoration efforts.

Hurricane Zeta brought more than 100-mph winds to Mississippi’s second largest city Wednesday, causing significant damage to its electricity infrastructure.

Alliant is sending 112 employees from Iowa and another 76 from Wisconsin for mutual assistance. Mike Wagner, the company’s senior communications partner, said Iowa was a recipient of similar mutual aid after the derecho.

“Mutual assistance is an important part of the industry we’re in,” he said. “We relied on this mutual aid assistance network to supply more than 3,000 workers from the U.S. and Canada to help with the derecho. It happens whenever mother nature strikes and depending on what the need is it changes.”

Alliant sent crews to assist in a similar fashion after Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Sandy.

There are more than 60,000 customers without power in Mississippi’s Gulf Coast region according to Coast Electric Power Association and Mississippi Power outage data. Gulfport is one of the most heavily affected parts of the state.

The extent of the damage to power infrastructure is not limited to dropped lines. Crews are bringing pole setting equipment in expectation of rebuilding some areas almost from scratch.

“They’ve had a lot of significant damage to the grid down there,” Wagner said. “It’s kind of like rebuilding the system.”

Wagner said the process will be somewhat similar to what Marshall County has gone through after the derecho. There is no timetable for when Iowa workers will return home, but Wagner said it will depend on what is needed. In some cases, different crews with different equipment will be shuffled in and out to meet the needs of the restoration effort.

The Iowa Alliant Energy employees met in Cedar Rapids early Saturday morning and will arrive in Gulfport Sunday afternoon.

Contact Joe Fisher at 641-753-6611 or jfisher@timesrepublican.com.