The crew you saw was probably working on getting the backbone of MEC’s electric system repaired. Our first priority in an outage is to get the main power lines back in operation. Not every wire is a main circuit. There are thousands of lines that feed off main circuits (called tap lines). So after the main power lines are energized, we start repairing tap lines next.
After trunk lines are functioning, we make repairs that affect the most people at one time. This means repairs affecting only one or two locations will probably be last.