Something needs to change

We lost our power for three days straight, and we live within the city limits of Boulder. I understand that we want to mitigate a wildfire and I am very appreciative that there were no wildfires however it has been four years since the Marshall fire and Xcel energy has invested nothing back into our community to prepare for the inevitable wins that come to Boulder. Their communication was erratic at best and extremely unhelpful. We were given completely inaccurate information about when power would be restored. I lost over $1000 in food which I could’ve preserved if given more timely and detailed information. And we had to spend money to relocate, in the midst of a very busy work week, and lack of school and childcare.

The only solution is for Xcel to commit to a three-year plan toprotecting our community from these kinds of power outages. Additionally, they should compromise by compensating folks who werewithout power for two or three days plus. I understand that they may not be able to cover the cost of all of our losses, but they should at least give us a few months of vouchers for energy credits, at least $500 value. Additionally, the loss to businesses has been monumental, and I know that Xcel has funds, so it should be reinvested back into our community to help folks who lost so much, and to prevent something like this from happening again.