Power likely not restored to all in Colorado Springs until Saturday
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - UPDATE: Colorado Springs Utilities gave an update on Friday saying power likely won't be restored for all customers until Saturday.
Earlier
Thousands of Southern Coloradans were still in the dark Thursday up and down the Front Range, a full day since extreme winds finally stopped. Colorado Springs Utilities says unfortunately some neighborhoods could be in the dark for another day.
"Our crews will continue to work that 24/7 schedule until every customer is restored," said Travas Deal, Colorado Springs Utilities Chief Operating Officer. "But right now, we anticipate it'll be through tomorrow before we're seeing all the restorations back.”
Springs Utilities says every single available crew member is out working Thursday, moving as fast as they can. At least 50 power poles went down around the Colorado Springs area Wednesday, and those take about 6 to 8 hours to fix.
Plus, in some cases, linemen might not even be able to work on a house until an electrician sees it first.
"Look at your home, see if it's safe," said Deal. "If you're out of power, see if you see any visible damage on your rooftop and make sure you're calling a licensed electrician to make those repairs so we can restore you very timely.”
And when it comes to restoring power, the areas with the biggest impact are being fixed first.
"Our restoration priorities are really based off of volume," said Deal. "So we try to restore those bigger areas first to get as many people back with the same amount of man-hours. So some of those smaller outages will take the most time, and those are the ones that will take until tomorrow.”
Springs Utilities insists this storm didn't take them by surprise, and they were well prepared to spring into restoration efforts once the winds died down to under 35 miles per hour on Wednesday evening.
"Colorado Springs Utilities was prepared for this," said Deal. "We knew in advance this event was coming, and so we knew we would have to put in place our incident command structure. We had extra crews on standby, and actually had extra crews rested knowing that we would not be able to make repairs during the strong winds. This event did impact up and down the Front Range, so resources across Colorado were limited."
One major point of frustration over the last two days for customers has been Colorado Springs Utilities’ website and outage map. The utility sys their website wasn’t able to support the sheer volume of reports it was getting on Wednesday, and they’re aware that’s an area they need to work on. They say they're actively working to update their technology so this doesn’t happen again in the future.
