Power Problems Persist On Thursday
DENVER (CBS4) - For many Coloradans on Thursday the problems from this week's winter storm are not over yet. Thousands of residents on the Front Range remained without power on Thursday at noon, and there are concerns new power outages could come as temperatures rise.
Xcel Energy said on Thursday at noon that they have about 40,000 customers who are without power. That includes about 18,000 in the Denver metro area, 11,000 in Greeley, 1,500 in the Boulder area and about 8,000 around Fort Collins.
The Poudre Valley REA power company said they have 2,000 customers without power and United Power said they still have some outages as well.
Street lights were still out at several intersections in Denver on Thursday, including one at Clarkson and 6th. Street crews placed temporary stop signs at the intersection in the morning. There was a crash involving three cars there earlier in the day.
Officials with Xcel said they are working hard to restore power to all customers and that they hope to have made major progress by the end of the day on Thursday. They said they hope to have all power restored to customers on Friday.
With the temperatures heating up after a freezing cold night, officials are also concerned about melting of snow on trees and the possibility of more limbs cracking and branches falling on power lines.
"We're still seeing branches coming down even with the melt," said Xcel Energy spokesman Gabriel Romero. "We had a freeze last night so there's still heavy snow on those trees and as it starts to melt we anticipate that we could have more outages. We haven't seen anything significant yet (today) but it still is pretty cold at the moment."
Xcel said that because they had several days to prepare for the storm they brought in crews from Grand Junction as well as all the way from Amarillo, Texas. They said those extra crews will likely return home this weekend.
Additional Resources
If you have a power outage to report or if you see downed power lines...
- Call Xcel Energy at (800) 895-1999
- Call 311 if you have downed trees and you live in Denver or Denver County
- If you live in Aurora and have downed trees, call (303) 739-7000
- You can also call 911
Xcel Energy has a special section of their website where they display power outage locations on a map.
