XCell shut off

Hi,

I filled out the survey, but wanted to add more of my experience.

First off, we received no notification until the power had already been turned off. That was totally unacceptable. And then it was by cell gone when I had 14% power left on my cell, and my car was low on gas, so charging it was difficult and worrisome.

Everything is on electric nowadays, even our hot water and our stove. Power went out at 2:45pm, and when we went out to get ice for our cooler and candles, everywhere was closed (grocery stores and gas stations) in our area. So we were out of luck. Luckily we had food and a few candles for that night.

The curious part to me about the whole thing was: why turn the power off in some places and not in others?

I am all for wild fire prevention, but this was a joke. Our power was completely out and the wind never got bad. The wind was way worse two weeks prior at our house. We are near the reservoir, so the wind gets crazy out here, but not the weekend of the shut off. We had one small branch in our yard and a couple of small sticks on Sunday morning. Less than usual after a wind storm. And we have tons of trees. The wind didn't even wake me up, and it does so regularly. So I woke up thinking: was that worth this? On Sunday we went out looking for coffee and ice and ended up driving all over Boulder, to discover the power turnoffs were totally random, and I couldn't help but notice that power was completely out in all of the trailer parks, and lower income neighborhoods, but on in the old town Mapleton area, as well the wealthy sections of North and South Boulder. So one action/deal for the poor and lower and middle income neighborhoods, and a different one for the rich? That is beyond unacceptable and truly insulting to every working class or middle class person in Boulder. Shame on XCELL!

I also came to find out that our friends never lost power in south Boulder (Martin Acres area), and their wind was terrible--shook their house, tore down a fence. And when we went to the open King Sooper in Gun Barrel on Sunday, the wind was the worse I expereinced during the entire weekend, and power was on there as well. So where the wind was mild, the power was cut, and where the wind was terrible, power was still on? Makes zero sense. How is that preventing wild fires? If you're going to do this, it should be the whole town, but with emergency services left on if possible, such as groceries and gas, hospitals, etc. A lot of those emergeny places have generators, anyway. And with that, a mass message sent out everywhere at east 24 hours in advance, so everypne knows what is happeneing and has time to prepare.

More corporate negligence in my opinion. And on top of it all, when we finally got a hold of someone at Xcell on Sunday trying to find out when power would be restored the woman had zero empathy, and was also rude.

I lost two days of work as I work teachign on zoom, plus working online for a literary journal. So it hurt my family financially as well, because I am not on salary. If I don;t work, I don't get paid. Which I am sure happened to many people, since so many people now work online since Covid. I have been exhausted this week, attemoting to catch up on so many things I wasn't able to do for work due to the outtage. And I cannot imagine what this was like for the edlerly and the infirm, people on medical equipment, etc.

The whole situation was insulting to the citizenary. And being that Xcell has a monopoly on power, there's nothing one can do. It feels like the whole country is falling apart and the coporations are profting off of it, and the politicians do nothing to regin them in.

I do appreciate the ability to report on this. So Thank you for that.

Best,

Toni Oswald