High Wind and Power Outage Safety Information; Make Them Hear You, Naturally

According to a Dec. 17 notice from Xcel Energy, some customers can expect possible power outages today, with high winds expected beginning around 10 a.m. today. The outages will affect around 50,000 customers in Boulder, Clear Creek, Jefferson, Larimer and Weld counties. Because of updated weather forecast changes for Friday Dec. 19, the company now says it is also evaluating the potential need for a second round of shutoffs in mountain communities and the Front Range on Friday beginning as early as 6 a.m.

The company said it may use those Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) to reduce the risk of wildfire. Xcel customers can look up their address on an outage map co.my.xcelenergy.com. KGNU spoke to Andrew Holder, Xcel’s director of community relations and local government affairs. Here’s what he said:

“We’ve been tracking this from about Sunday evening into the morning hours, and we’re seeing wind gusts up to 75 and 80 miles an hour. Now, when you couple those extreme winds with the long duration of no moisture that we’ve seen here along the front range — we haven’t seen precipitation — we’re creating a very extreme dry condition, which creates an extreme wildfire risk environment. [At] Xcel energy, we’ve taken every protocol that we can at our disposal to ensure that we keep our customers and our community safe.

That includes using the operational tactic of enhanced power line safety settings. This is where we set our overhead power lines to a more sensitive setting, so that if a tree branch or something comes in contact with our overall electricity line, then it will stop the flow of electricity and our crews would respond to those and start its way from its substations.”

Holder also said Xcel may also use PSPS to reduce wildfire risk. “Those are where we systematically de-energize segments of overhead conductor to ensure that our community stays safe during these extreme wildfire environment scenarios,” said Holder.

As of yesterday afternoon, Xcel is expecting the weather to cease around 6 or 7 p.m.

Holder said “that’s when we will start our restoration, understanding that this is going to be a long duration for restoration. If you do experience an outage, ensure that you communicate that to us through our Xcel Energy website, and make sure your contact information is up to date, so as we get in information, we can relay that over to our customers. But we just implore all of our customers to stay up to date with our information and stay safe as we’re starting to see some extreme weather coming at us.”

As for how long customers can expect those outages to last, Holder said it will depend on the extent of the damages from the wind. “Think of broken poles or things of that nature. Our crews are gonna be working around the clock. We [anticipate] to have over 100 crews that are going to be working along the front range, restoring power outages.

We just appreciate our customers and our community’s grace as our frontline workers are going to be working around the clock in some pretty extreme conditions to get power restored as safely and as efficiently as possible.”

When asked about whether Xcel has a plan to mitigate risks associated with dark traffic signals, Holder said “we partner very closely with our offices of emergency management who have robust response plans for each one of the communities that we also partner with to serve. So we’ve been in coordination with our office of emergency management since Monday afternoon, Sunday evening, and going into the week. As we started seeing this on the forecast, we have been systematically giving them information on what we have in real time so that they can bring the resources to ensure our community stays safe as we potentially see some of these power outages over the next few days.”

KGNU also spoke to Vinnie Montez, spokesperson for Boulder’s Office of Disaster Management (ODM), about how to stay safe during the high winds, fire risks, and power outages.

Montez said to treat all downed power lines as energized, stay away from trees that could fall, and report any hazards to ODM. Due to fire risk conditions, no outdoor burning is allowed.

“If you rely on medical equipment, have a backup plan now. If you have a medical equipment that requires charging,  maybe it’s better to move [in] with a friend over the next couple days or have a plan to do that so that you know they’re gonna be outside the power shut down area. I want to make sure that people are ensuring that they have extra batteries. And if people are on oxygen, have that backup plan if their generators for the oxygen are not gonna be able to be functioning. What does your plan look like? Do you need to get a hold of your medical companies to see if you could have extra brought to you as far as oxygen, or make that plan to relocate yourself to a place where power will be accessible? And also for medications, you know, people are going to be needing refrigerated medications to keep them available to use. ”

He says to plan ahead and have a checklist for power outage events, both for today and in the future.

“Check with the people that you are friends with, family members. Make sure they got a plan in place. Know where people are gonna be, because if power goes down, that communication between family members is really important. So we avoid utilizing public safety services to do a lot of welfare checks and things like that. People can plan in advance so they know what everybody’s plan is gonna be. And probably the most important thing is don’t wait until the power is out to start making these decisions and choices. Have that plan ahead.”

National Weather Service information including red flag warnings

Xcel Energy site including outage map

Boulder Office of Disaster Management (ODM)

BOCO Alerts

This story aired on the Morning Magazine, KGNU’s weekday morning show featuring in-depth discussions on local news issues. Click here to listen to other episodes of the Morning Magazine.