Mountain communities lost power for 3 days, no running water

Our mountain community west of Boulder lost power from 3pm saturday until 3pm tuesday, a total of 72 hours. The original communication from xcel said the power would be restored by 12pm sunday, but used vague language to infer it might not come back on. Each update we were given for the actual time of restoration was vague and ultimately incorrect, keeping us in the dark, literally, about when we'd actually get power back. They would push the restoration time forward 12 hours at a time, giving us the idea it would be on sooner than it actually was.

In our community, everyone uses a well for their running water and when the power goes out the well pump shuts down, meaning nobody has running water. We do not have water for drinking, bathing, flushing the toilet, or anything. We also have no cell service in the area and rely on energy to power wifi for communications. One of the most concerning aspects of this outage was that, in the case of an emergency such as wildfire, we are completely without communications and would not be able to receive real time updates on an unfolding situation or an evacuation notice, a potentially life threatening situation especially for our slower moving elderly residents.

There are many elderly residents who live alone in our area, some dependent on power for oxygen. My next door neighbor had to be brought a generator by her neighbors in order to power her oxygen machine. Simply telling vulnerable customers the day of the outage to find somewhere else to go in case of prolonged outage is extremely irresponsible especially for elderly residents with limited mobility. We needed more clear and honest communication from xcel, and more proactive effort for restoration of power. 3 days is far too long for us to be without power up here, especially without transparency on the part of xcel on restoration times.