There needs to be investment in hardening.

My family was impacted by the first outage back in April 2025. My home was not directly impacted by the most recent shut off. However, I have kids in elementary schools and having Jefferson County not have school was a very impactful decision. I understand Jefferson County Schools did not want to have students inside buildings when the power goes out. I can appreciate their proactive stance. And I know much of this is out of their control. However, is very impactful for my work schedule our children’s care schedule and the overall stress of not knowing if the Friday update would’ve affected our house with the power shut off. Having been through the April shut off that went on for more than 72 hours we knew how impactful it would be on our home.

I have a hard time with this Band-Aid solution of proactively turning off power without a hardening plan being published. Build a plan to address the largest and most common issues that impacted public services, public school and families and individuals -or this is going to go on forever. The PUC must hold the utility to account to strengthen and harden the infrastructure. Wires on poles along known or now twice-impacted wind areas should be a priority to quickly expedite hardening of structure, burying of transmission, lines, and supporting faster, response, and recognition time.

The PUC must act in the interest of the ratepayers and advocate, or require, this utility to solve this problem. Allowing proactive shut offs to limit liability concerns is incredibly impactful on its customers. It only benefits the utility and their profits.