Adjustments for future weather occurrences must be made

As someone who worked in Louisville and had to evacuate during the Marshall Fire, I know how important it was to shut off the power because of similar extreme wind/drought to prevent another disaster. That being said, it has been 4 years since the Marshall Fire and that has been plenty of time to reinforce or update high risk areas. With over 200 BILLION dollars in profits, why has Xcel not taken care of their customers that fund their profits and paychecks? These weather events and conditions are not going away, it is time for action! Just having power shut offs because Xcel doesn't think that updating the infrastructure is important is unacceptable.

I live in Green Mountain and our neighbors literally across the street and the whole neighborhood behind us had power while my complex and the apartments next door had our power shut off. My husband called Xcel to ask why and they told him they did not believe him and that everyone else must have had generators. The whole neighborhood behind us have generators, really? Not only did this happen twice this week, but the last shut off in 2024 and we were without power for 3 days. I was working 30 hours a week and taking 5 classes at the time, which means that I had very specific times I needed to work on assignments. Luckily this time I was out of school and did not have assignments to complete. It was understandable why the power needed to be shut off but why did everyone around us have power the whole time?! That is when my husband and I became very frustrated at the situation!

Wednesday I attempted to save our fridge food by running to the store to get ice to fill up coolers. We lost all of that food. The Friday shut off, I attempted again to save the freezer food. Luckily we had only lost a few things but we buy meat on sale and stock the freezer so we can stay on a strict budget. I am about to start an internship and an online Master's degree and I can not afford to keep losing power like this. I will not be able to work during the internship (10 months long) so we really have to stretch our dollars when it comes to food and other essentials. I NEED to be able to do my assignments without fear of losing power for an extended period of time.

My one neighbor has a breathing machine he needs for nighttime and our other neighbor had already gotten their Christmas food.

It is time to get your head out of the sand, Xcel and take care of your customers properly!