Pat Thomas lives in Sugarloaf off Millionaire Drive, where she’s been since 1992. She understands the demands of mountain living. But the snowstorm last week, and the subsequent power outage that lasted some 80 hours, put her in a dangerous situation.
Thomas, who is in her 70s, relies on oxygen. The deep snow trapped her and her wife, Carrie Barker, in their home and cut off the power needed to run Thomas’s oxygen tanks. While she had backup batteries, they ran dry as the powerless days piled up.
“I was constantly running out of oxygen,” Thomas said. “You get so strange in the head with that, and such a headache.”
The power outage started around 3 a.m. on Thursday, March 14, and lasted until until about 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 17. To conserve battery power, Thomas said she significantly reduced her oxygen usage, which left her in a headspace that made it difficult to think clearly but kept her breathing. Coupled with their home’s temperature dropping to 50 degrees, her arthritis became unbearable. Barker, Thomas’s wife, fought through snow to use their car to charge Thomas’s oxygen battery. It took six and a half hours to provide enough charge to run the oxygen tank for four hours.
While many within Boulder city limits who lost power saw it restored within 24 hours or less, a more alarming situation unfolded in mountain neighborhoods just miles away. And it highlighted the particular perils weather extremes can pose for vulnerable residents. Barker and others expressed their frustration with Xcel Energy.
“I was just appalled at how egregious Xcel treated our pocketed neighborhood,” Barker said. “It becomes a matter of real safety. Xcel put us in a level of danger that was uncomfortable.”
After an initial notification from the utility on Thursday letting residents know that it was aware the Millionaire neighborhood was without power, residents stopped receiving updates. While others in Sugarloaf regained power by Thursday afternoon, those in the Millionaire neighborhood experienced periods of electricity coming back for a minute or two, only for it to disappear again for another day. According to Nick Wilson, a resident of Millionaire Drive, the cause of these intermittent starts and stops was never communicated. Wilson used a snowmobile to eventually reach Thomas and Barker, taking the oxygen batteries to homes with generators to get them charged.
“I know it was a challenging storm, but ultimately I do feel like there was a gross failure in communication from Xcel, other than ‘We’re working on it,’” Wilson said. “Communication helps us to plan, and we didn’t have that.”
In a statement provided to Boulder Reporting Lab, Xcel spokesperson Michelle Aguayo said the March 14-15 snow event knocked out power to more than 123,000 customers across the state. “We understand that having an outage of any kind in weather conditions that we experienced last week is difficult and frustrating,” Aguayo said. “We use the lessons we learn in such cases to improve our communication with our customers and refine our process for restoring outages.”
At one point Ben Bayer, a volunteer firefighter with the Sugarloaf Fire Protection District, said he flagged down an Xcel truck while in uniform. He wanted to inform workers that despite the power briefly returning to the Millionaire neighborhood, it went out again. Bayer said the workers didn’t provide any answers.
“They definitely were not happy that there was a citizen stopping them and letting them know there was another outage,” Bayer said.
Thomas said she repeatedly called Xcel to understand what was going on. When she said she was running out of oxygen, Xcel told Thomas to call 911 if her situation was dire, or contact ski patrol since her home was socked in. Thomas asked if Xcel would cover the expenses, and said she didn’t believe she needed to go to the hospital.
Aguayo said Xcel had roughly 300 people working 16-hour shifts for four days to try and restore power.
“Impassible roads in Boulder Canyon also delayed the start of some restoration efforts — some by more than two days — resulting in longer outages for some customers,” she added.
Almost everyone in the Millionaire neighborhood relies on well water with electric pumps, which added another layer of concern during the snowstorm. Nearly 50 inches of snow fell in the Millionaire neighborhood, Wilson said. Despite the massive storm, temperatures remained high enough that freezing pipes weren’t an immediate worry. Still, “the nights were extraordinarily cold and difficult,” Wilson said, adding that, “if we were hitting negative 20s, this would have been a life or death situation for a big chunk of the community.”
Without answers about why their power took so long to return, Thomas, Barker and Wilson all proposed that the electrical infrastructure on their street was not up to the task of the new demands placed on it. Thomas said when she first moved to the mountains 30 years ago, no one had air conditioners. Now, many have electric vehicles and even backup batteries drawing from the antiquated grid. Wilson, an engineer who founded Ayva Network, the company that provides internet to the area, floated the idea of not just updating the lines, but putting them underground. This has become a growing concern not just with heavy snow but also with wildfires being sparked by above-ground lines.
“I’d like there to be more investment in our infrastructure,” Wilson said.
Xcel said that “other than weather related outages, the grid held up as it was designed.”
There’s worry about what the future holds should grid limitations not be addressed, especially for older adults and other vulnerable residents with health and mobility concerns. Wilson said while there are wealthier families living near him, there are also many who “don’t even remotely have the means to move elsewhere, let alone down into Boulder.”
Beyond the extreme snowstorm, as the climate continues changing, other extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent, making any less-than-modern grid infrastructure more perilous.
“I can’t be the only one that has oxygen needs up here,” Thomas said. “Somebody is going to die.”
Probably need to get used to that happening now that the automatic re-set has been shut down due to the lawsuit over the Marshall fire. Also, since gas was not affected I am glad we had it to turn on the stove and fireplace while our power was out.
Maybe vulnerable residents can no longer afford to risk their lives living in remote mountain areas subject to greater outages. As the tradeoffs on the greater numbers killed by fire from detached wires unmaintained by Xcel that Michael Dougherty failed to prosecute for criminal malfeasance, these riskier service areas locations adds to the vulnerable population needs for service if they are already compromised.