Completely unacceptable

This was horrible!! We had to leave our home. We had no heat, no way to cook, no light (rural area) and no hot water, no garage door working, no internet or phone. We took our dog and stayed in a hotel. We came home to a freezing cold house, no known time the power would be back on. Should get another hotel room? It was 3:00 pm and we had to make a decision because had to get ready for work next day. tried calling Xcel.Was on hold for over 1.5 hours. Finally go through. Rep had no information and could tell us nothing.
If the temp had been just a couple degrees cooler we could had had freeing of pipes.

Neighboring power companies (co-op) and municipalities did not turn off their power. The reason xcel Did this was monetary. Then do Not maintain their lines as well as neighboring co-op and municipalities.They are profit and shareholder value motivated and did not want their stock price to go any lower as a result of their negligence. The wind died down rather quickly. However, because they had deenergized the lines, they had to drive the entire line in order to re-energize it, which is what took all the time. Most people don’t understand that if they deenergize the line they cannot just turn it back on. They were understaffed they didn’t have, the manpower to manage this terrible decision.

Plus our power is buried, not overhead in our entire subdivision!

They are going to be subject to massive lawsuits if they continue to do this. This is a public safety issue. I happen to be on the board of another electric company, and we did not energize our lines. Did we have outages? Yes we had some. But we did not select the outages and we got them back up and running much quicker than excel because we didn’t have extra powerlines to drive and check on and re-energize at the expense of the people that did experience power outages.
our son, an attorney, said what happens when someone cannot callFor emergency? And dies. Or has no heat or A/C and is too young or old. And dies! Or has no medical devices working. And dies!

As it was we lost food in our refrigerator and the freezer melted, causing us to throw out all the frozen food. Well over $1000 lost. Plus our hotel costs totaled over $1500. Yea we still have to pay xcel for power and service we didn’t receive.

I am paying for electricity. Just like water it is an essential service. I expect it to be available ALL THE TIME TO ME. I am not paying for part time power.

Businessss in our town has to shut down. No gas pumps worked. Grocery store was shut down. No restaurants. Nada. Any number of problems were created. Commerce stopped. So what? Xcel could protect their bottom line??

as a consumer of electricity in the state of Colorado, I strongly urge you to not allow this to be repeated, or even considered to be the norm. If companies keep their lines in optimal condition and employ the right amount of people to service them, the likelihood of fire as a result of wind is fairly small. The cost of the community and the people, that excel is serving is enormous. This was tragic and should never be repeated again. It was simply for the benefit of their bottom line and profit margin.
please do not ever allow this to happen again in any state let alone in Colorado, where we have to have heat at our disposal pretty much all year long, particularly in the areas that are up against the foothills and into the foothills, which is where they de-energized there was no excuse for our power to be out. As I said, our lines are buried.