Xcel's power outage at Frasier, a senior living facility in Boulder

My name is Barbara Farhar, and I am president of the Resident Council at Frasier, a senior living facility in Boulder housing some 500 residents. Approximately 400 of us live in Independent Living and 100 in Assisted Living, Memory Care, or Health Care. I spent 27 years working professionally in the energy field. Frasier's is a vulnerable population. As I write this, staff and residents are still recovering from the 28-hour power outage this past weekend from Saturday at 3:30 p.m. to Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with not even an hour's notice.

Our staff was incredible in dealing with all of the problems thrust upon them with almost no warning. We do have back-up generators to provide power for critical needs, but we had problems getting diesel delivery for them. Although I can understand the concept of de-energizing, I cannot imagine how Xcel could come to a decision to shut off power to the major senior living facility in Boulder with its many medical-related needs. It boggles the mind they could think such an action would be appropriate. We noticed the power was still on at nearby apartment buildings! In my view, Xcel should never have turned off power to Frasier. I believe that decision reflected poor judgment on their part.

Need Notice and Education

If the power will be shut down in response to predicted high winds, and this will happen 5-10 times per year then we really need to have clear notice of power shutoffs and reasonable expectations of power return. Our neighborhood got about 2 hours notice and was mostly word of mouth and power was out for 60 hours. Nearly everyone in our neighborhood supports the shut down to avoid fire. Our ranch burned in the Marshall Fire destroying everything of our families livelihood, our home, our barn and all the animals burned to death. We really don't want that to…

Lottery System for Preemptive Shutoffs?

In our neighborhood in Berthoud, we were part of a planned “precautionary” shut off from 3pm on Saturday until 1 pm on Sunday, due to the high winds. We live in a very small neighborhood with no exposed power lines (all buried) and no mature trees, so this seemed odd. When we asked around, no one outside of our neighborhood seemed to have been notified of a shut off, including our commercial business 3 miles away in Berthoud (with incredibly old and drooping powerlines) nor family in Loveland.We drove around late Saturday night to find that the areas we thought…

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