No Planning or Communication

We were out of town and heard about it from the woman taking care of our pets. We got one voicemail the day before saying Xcel MAY turn off the power and nothing after that.

I work as a Wildfire Mitigation Specialist. I sincerely hope they are getting advising from a wildfire specialist. On the plains where grasses dry out fast, I could see the merit of preemptively turning off power. However, up in the foothills, there is still snow on the ground and the soils are saturated, thus meaning risk was minimal. They shut off power up there, where low temps were going down to 18-20 degrees overnight, meaning temps were in the low 40s overnight in our house. I know this because we have a weather station that records inside and outside low temps.

We were worried for the wellbeing of our pets, and being out of town had limited options of what to do. We had someone coming in every day, but at that point, there was nowhere for someone to take them.

I think the communication was pretty poor. We never got a notification after that initial voicemail. There was not detailed map explaining where the outages were. They did not coordinate with local governments or support organizations to help people in need -- i.e. providing a place to take food to keep it from getting spoiled, a place to go to get warm. Everyone was left scrambling.

At our home, we went without power for 52 hours. That's well past what they projected. How did they determine whose power was re-energized? Did they prioritize people in areas like the foothills where it was quite cold? It just seems like this was not well planned, thought out, nor was a solid communication plan put together.

They must have been thinking of doing this for awhile. Why didn't they issue a press release before any event occurred, announcing this change in policy?

Just think this whole thing was handled poorly.