This is not a communication issue, this is a greed issue

This is not solely a notification or communication issue. There should not be precautionary shut downs, and there should be less risk of damage in big windstorms. Xcel should have started working years ago to improve the resilience of their power lines. They need to greatly reinforce power lines in critical spots, bury lines when needed/possible, and take whatever other steps experts recommend to make power more reliable in our increasingly stormy world.

For a company to just throw its hands up and claim it can do nothing besides stop delivering the power that it's paid to deliver is a terrible business model, dangerous, and should be criminal. Xcel should be held accountable for this and start working to improve, not tell us it's just going to communicate better next time. The only reason they don't do these things is because it's expensive, and they would rather give shareholders and their top management more money. It's a betrayal of the public trust. But they're a monopoly, so they get away with it.

And they've already said they plan to have more! If there had been a fire, we had no internet, no TV, no radio. So the danger to the public was extreme. In addition, with blackouts comes crime, sadly. Xcel advertising future "precautionary" blackouts is horrendous from a public safety perspective.

Our lawmakers must hold Xcel accountable, and must insist that this monopoly take every possible step to improve their infrastructure before they even think about just cutting off power.