Life without electrical power, as the victims of Hurricane Sandy can attest, is inconvenient, uncomfortable and often boring. For the people who repair Sandy’s damage, however, it can be lethal.

I know, because I grew up in a household where the breadwinner worked for a power company. After flying 32 missions over Europe as a ball-turret-gunner on a B17, my dad returned home in 1946 and took a job with Ameren Electric, based in St. Louis.

As a kid, if I was still awake when he returned home from a trouble call, I would sit at the kitchen table while he ate a warmed-up dinner served by my mother. He shoveled in food like he was feeding a coal furnace, and metaphorically speaking he was: Pulling double shifts while dangling in the air during a subzero ice storm burns a lot of calories. . .