Many Jefferson County residents felt “left in the dark” after planned Colorado power outages
Tens of thousands of Xcel Energy customers experienced planned power outages in Colorado starting Wednesday. Some residents in Jefferson County said they felt left in the dark, literally and figuratively.
“We are staying at my parents’ house, but our neighbors decided to hunker down and ride out the power outage,” Mallory Mckenna told CBS Colorado as she packed up food from the fridge and belongings for her family to spend the weekend at her parents’ house. Although the Mckennas and their two children have a place to stay for the weekend, she is setting up a generator to lend to her neighbors.
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“We’ve been kind of told we’re not sure when it’s going to come back,” said Mckenna. “I’m going to let our neighbors borrow it for their fridge, charge their phones, do what they need to do.”
The Mckennas moved to Lakewood from Florida earlier this year and are used to power outages due to hurricanes. But, the lack of electricity means they’re clearing out their fridge and moving the Christmas party they were set to host elsewhere.
“It’s hard to happen right before Christmas, but you have to do what you have to do and hopefully try to help out the people around you the best as you can,” said Mckenna.
Meanwhile, neighbor Todd Peterson is grateful for the generator to provide some basic needs.
“I’m going to plug in the refrigerator and some lights and maybe work on my computer a little bit today, hopefully,” said Peterson as he hauled the generator to his house.
Over in Morrison, ProLean Training owner Alex Carneiro spent around 24 hours without power at home and at his business where he had to cancel training sessions Thursday morning. He felt he wasn’t given an appropriate notice from Xcel Energy and says he wasn’t notified about the possibility of an outage until the day it happened. He added he was “left in the dark” as to when the power would return.
“There’s no heads up, there’s no preparation,” said Carneiro. “It just puts us as a business owner and someone who’s living in a house a little bit of a complication. You get to the house and you think ‘Oh it’s going to be nice, I’m going to have power back.’ There’s no power. You go to work thinking ‘I’m going to get some power so I can charge my electronics and anything I need. There’s no power there.'”
Although his power turned back on Thursday, there’s still a possibility it could be shut off again.
For Carneiro, and countless others, it has been a wake-up call to make sure he’s prepared in the future.
On Thursday morning, Xcel Energy Colorado President Robert Kenney said Xcel looks at strong wind gusts, dry conditions and low humidity when considering power shutoffs. The utility company list their plans for Public Safety Power Shutoffs at a special section of xcelenergy.com.
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