One Ward business owner is calling Xcel Energy “tone deaf” for its Tuesday social media message thanking its customers who lost power for their understanding while the utility turned the lights back on after last week’s windstorm. She was among the 182 still in the dark north of Nederland when the message was posted.
In some communities north of Nederland, such as Ward and Allenspark, 182 Xcel customers were without power from 2:33 p.m. Dec. 17 to Tuesday afternoon, according to the utility’s outage map.
“We would like to thank you for your patience and support as we took steps to protect the safety of our communities and decrease the risk of wildfire over the past few days,” the utility wrote in a social media post. “We know being without power is disruptive and can be frustrating, so we take the decision to implement a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) very seriously.”
For some of the Xcel customers still without power when the thank you was released, it felt ill-timed, or “tone deaf,” as the co-owner of Ward’s Hotel Columbia, Masyn Moyer, put it. Moyer lives in the Newmarket Street hotel, too, and said Xcel’s estimated power restoration time for her home had been pushed back numerous times since the outage started last week.
Moyer has owned the hotel for about a year but is a veteran of living in the mountains. Being without power this long is a challenge, she said, and some people in small towns really struggle with the loss of power and the ability to make phone calls.
“Who’s expecting an 8-day outage?” asked Moyer, who said she knew people as far as Allenspark were without power as long as she was. “That (message) felt a little like a kick in the teeth.”
Wind is nothing new in Ward, Moyer said. Strong gusts may be uncommon for Boulder or Longmont, but this mountain town is used to 50, 60, 70 mph gusts, so the planned power shutoff didn’t quite feel like it was tailored to Ward’s needs, she said.
Moyer said Ward has some seniors who use oxygen tanks that couldn’t contact authorities in the event of an emergency, and Ward has some small business owners who could have lost perishable goods during an already-slow season for the small mountain community. She worried, too, about how children felt without Christmas lights so close to the holiday.
“It’s kind of ridiculous in this day and age to be this long,” Moyer said of the outage, also asking why there aren’t more forward-thinking energy solutions for communities like hers. “We know how to deal with things, but damn. Damn.”
Xcel spokesperson Sydney Isenberg said a tree fell on power lines, causing the outage. Crews were still on scene and hoped to restore power sometime Tuesday afternoon, as of about 2:30 p.m., Isenberg said.
The outage north of Nederland was one of the largest in Colorado on Tuesday afternoon, according to Xcel.
The outages across Boulder County started as planned shutoffs on Wednesday, aiming to limit the risk of rapid wildfire spread amid a windstorm. That windstorm brought gusts over 100 mph and took out power for as many as 100,000 people across Colorado.