Crews Work On Power Lines Damaged After Fire

People in the Ute pass were without electricity for a few hours Tuesday afternoon. The large scale interruption was planned by Colorado Springs Utilities because crews had to fix an electrical line that was damaged by the Waldo Canyon Fire.

“We were afraid it was going to go out and maybe drop the conductor or cause another fire,” said Brian Anderson, the Operations Manager for Gas and Electricity.

The work was urgent after the Waldo Canyon Fire and several storms caused some major damage to an electric line in Ute Pass.

“We have been in there working on that since the fire, but we have got some poles that are in some pretty rugged areas,” said Anderson.

The area so that crews had to hand dig to fix problem areas, replace wires, and insulators.

The planned outage is meant to fix one of the two available lines, so crews can fix it on their own terms and not after an accident or unplanned outage.

“The line has about 4 problems on it that we have identified with our thunder storms and things like that. In that area we take a lot of lightning,” said Anderson.

A total of 22 poles were damaged.

Next week a helicopter is expected to come into that area that was damaged to continue the work to make sure everything is back to normal. No other outages have been planned.