were still without power Monday evening, two days after extremely high winds damaged power lines and caused the utility to purposefully turn off power to prevent wildfires.
On Monday, 9NEWS talked with Xcel Colorado CEO Robert Kenney and PUC Director Rebecca White about the company's response and customer communication during the storm.For people who had their power turned off proactively, how is it that we're here Monday, two days later, and they still do not have power?We saw the windstorms start, 3:00 on Saturday, and those extraordinarily high winds ended and were forecasted to end at noon on Sunday.
These are winds that we would say are in the 97th percentile, or the top 3% of wind speeds. So, this exceeds wind speeds that we typically see. And then you add on to that low fuel moisture, meaning dry grass, dry vegetation, that is fuel for a wildfire. And so, looking at both of those together, that's how you get an extraordinarily high danger of a wildfire happening.