Every-Day Heroes

Model workers honored for dedication and persistence

- Ji Jing

For Hu Hongwei, an army veteran, undertaking risky tasks is a part of his work. Since retiring from the army and joining State Grid Hubei Electric Power Co. in 2000, his work is to repair faulty ultra-high voltage power transmission lines, a dangerous job.

In 2009, he was selected to do maintenance work on live 800-kilovolt transmission lines, an even more challenging assignment. He needed to undergo intensive training for half a year, during which he had to carry out simulated operations in the day and analyze his performance at night to ensure that every step was done correctly.

Finally on June 10, 2009, Hu became the first person in the world to work on an ultrahigh voltage transmission line with power still on after he climbed onto a high-voltage tower at an experimental base in Beijing.

In 2020, he had another challenging task during the peak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In February, he and his colleagues were told a high voltage line had developed a problem that could lead to a massive power failure in Wuhan, capital of Hubei in central China that bore the brunt of the epidemic.

Hu, a Wuhan native, rushed to the site with his colleagues. However their vehicle had to stop 4 km away as the road was blocked by mounds. They had to get out of the vehicle, carry equipment weighing more than 65 kg on their backs to the site and climb up the nearly 40-meter high transmission tower to fix the problem. When the task was completed, his clothes were wet with sweat and he was cold and hungry.