Xcellent Job! Thank you!

(My apologies to the moderators! This is the second attempt. I found many typos in the first!)

20 Jan 2026

Xcel Energy handled the recent Wildfire risk with the extreme high winds in an excellent manner. I was surprised to see the complaint from Tammy Story who I follow and do support.

But I feel our culture has unrealistic expectations expecting perfection out of our organizations and government when we cannot expect it out of ourselves.

I feel we could be more realistic with the fact that a large corporation such as Xcel, who has serviced our Foothills home for more than 25 years, cannot be God.

I understand that the short time notice made it difficult for many people. I understand the frustration at food loss, at low temperatures in the home.

But the circumstance we had was, to my understanding, unprecedented in the past years of modern technology.

Will we criticize Xcel for moving quickly to preserve lives and no doubt millions of dollars and complain about the hundreds we have lost and the fact that we or cold?

I find this critical attitude disheartening and not at all encouraging. And please know we have nothing to do with Xcel, other than to receive services from them. I have nothing to gain from this comment personally.

I find a scolding attitude does not help, especially when people are doing the best they can in a difficult situation.

We also had to come up with an emergency backup plan for preserving food. We have cold packs and ice that we did the best we could with and yes some food was lost and yes the EVENT was irritating and frustrating, but I thought Xcel handled it amazingly well.

The goal of the company was to preserve many lives and it is not their responsibility to play parent and navigate the internal home situation of emergency power loss for hundreds of thousands of people.

Why do the people not have responsibility within their own homes to have backup situations for emergencies?

Each individual could have a backup plan that would be less than $1,000 long-term, no doubt over five or 10-years.

We lived in the Foothills and we always had backup plans, though this was the first time we had to invest $700 in a generator and yes it was frustrating, but in no way was it Xcel's fault.

We had a relatively new and unique situation and we have learned from it.

They will learn as well, but scolding instead of applauding puts unrealistic expectations on humans. We do the best we can do.

Why not scold the individuals for not being prepared for an emergency? Thankfully Xcel has not taken that attitude toward us, and we would be offended if they did.

Our family has lived below poverty level for many years and I understand money being tight, I understand living paycheck to paycheck, but this is where family and community come in.

This is where we have to make decisions and choices in our lives to let go of some of the things that we want to have, some of the things we spend our time, energy money and resources, and then we have to learn how to be prepared. And this is difficult. I have brain processing issues and I understand not everybody can do this.

Which is why we have families and communities.

But it still is not Xcel's job or the government's job to play parent or family.

It is the parents and the families and the community's job to oversee that the individuals are properly trained and cared for in a realistic manner.

I know this challenges much of today's thinking, but the government is not meant to be God, neither is the corporation and we can get as angry as we want at them failing us in areas where we ourselves should have taken responsibility, but if we continue to criticize and insist they do things that are impossible, they will not be able to afford the time, money or energy to do the things they need to do for us which is provide electricity gas and the power needed to run the Heat and the lights.

So let's allow them to take their time and energy into the things that they are supposed to do, because surely we understand if we put more on their plate that is our responsibility and make them do our jobs then we will be paying them more money to do our job.

Surely it makes a whole lot more sense for us for each individual to help our communities and see that everybody has a backup plan, than to increase yet again the cost of energy, because we are refusing to take our responsibility and do what we are supposed to do. Forgive me that makes no logical sense.

If needed, we can step back a bit from purchasing lottery tickets and McDonald's and Starbucks, perhaps we could step back from vaping and cigarettes and learn to budget, and to be more resilient as individuals within society, learning once again what it means to be a community and to care for those who truly cannot care for themselves.

We could give up some of our video game time, movie time, and social media time and take the time to check in on our neighbors and make sure they are prepared for any kind of emergency.

For those that are elderly or sick, for centuries family and community were the support.

Expecting the government and corporations to take the place of family and take the place of community is completely unrealistic. That is not their job. 🙏💞

I was hugely impressed with the whole thing and very grateful that they were able to navigate putting in place outages to protect lives and no doubt millions if not billions of dollars in property should some crazy fires erupt.

Could you imagine if, instead of what we had to go through we had 20 or 35 fires starting across the city? No doubt then we would complain they had not done their job.

But perhaps if mitigation is needed they can outline a structure so that individuals can have backup plans in their homes for such emergencies, such as a generator.

Emergency supplies for food that are shelf stable. That do not need to be cooked. We always have peanut butter jelly and cereal and you can live for quite a few days on that.

We can be responsible humans, understanding that there are emergency situations, and yes they are irritating and sometimes scary, but we don't need to use those situations to attack the people trying to help us.

Thank you, Xcel.

We didn't lose millions of dollars in a huge Denver fire. We did not lose hundreds of lives.

I have no doubt you will evaluate the situation and see how you could have done better with this new dynamic, because we all learn and Grow.

I have no doubt that our communities and individuals will commit themselves to taking our time, energy, money and resources into planning and preparing should we have anything like this happen again.

I have no doubt we will be responsible for the things within our ability of time, energy, money and resources, working on correcting ourselves for our misuse of those things, before being quick to accuse others.

And I have no doubt that every individual will make a circle of five or 10 and take time away from social media and the other things that we do not need for life to make sure that those in our Circle have what they need for life so that if something serious happens we will all be prepared.

I applaud Xcel for the way they handled things. I trust that they will do the best to continue to educate and provide resources as they have done for so many years.

God's peace.💞🙏