Thursday night I was roused from a perfectly good sleep by the sounds of rushing winds, driving rain and tree limbs falling on the roof.

A storm was pushing its way through our area, creating quite the racket. Normally storms just deepen my sleep, but for some reason this one interrupted it.

Then it happened, the power flickered, and then died. Great, now not only am I wide-awake, but I know I can’t sleep without the droning sound of fans in the background.

This is where the unsung heroes of society came to the rescue.

There’s been a lot of coverage of the roles police officers, EMS and firefighters play in helping people in need. They respond to accidents, fires and acts of crime, putting their lives on the line for our wellbeing.

But a group of professionals is often overlooked, the men and women who work to restore power after a storm.

Sure, their job looks semi-easy when the sun is shining and everything is working properly. But for the most part we don’t see the late night calls that put them on wet roads and bring them into dangerous situations where a power line could still be charged, but invisible.

We don’t take into consideration the dangers they face when working so high off the ground, around cables carrying lethal doses of electricity.

When my fans kicked back on less than two hours after the storm had passed, I gave a quiet thanks to those who got up in the middle of the night to get in their work trucks and find the cause of the problem. I tried to imagine the difficulty they may have had diagnosing the problem and the hurdles they faced to rectify it.

To those of you who trudged out into the night and restored power to all of us who lost it that night, thanks.