Underground lines

One thing that few people are talking about is the fact that areas with buried power lines were still cut off. Much of the core of the City of Boulder has underground wires, yet many of these areas (including my neighborhood) lost power. This makes no sense. At a Monday meeting, the Xcel rep said he was "unaware that any areas with underground lines were cut," and the room erupted with "Oh yes there were!!" Additionally, these areas still took hours (or days) to have power restored. Xcel's excuse of "we have to inspect the lines" makes no sense when we're talking about lines that are underground; are they digging up these lines to inspect them?

Boulder has spent millions of dollars to secure an underground electric grid for situations exactly like last weekend, and yet we lost power anyway. I support the idea of cutting power where there are exposed lines that could spark a fire, but those of us lucky enough to have underground lines should not be the victims of Xcel's apparent lack of familiarity with its infrastructure. I think this is an important issue that needs to be discussed.