Widespread power outages affected thousands of residents late Thursday and all day Friday in Archuleta and La Plata counties.
The outages were the result of wet, heavy snow that blanketed La Plata Electric Association’s service area.
As of 5:30 p.m. Friday, the electric co-op was aware of 107 outages affecting 1,805 customers in the two-county region, said LPEA spokeswoman Hillary Knox.
At its peak, LPEA had more than 125 separate outages and more than 10,200 customers without power, she said.
“This is the most widespread outage and the longest outage that we’ve had in a number of years at LPEA,” Knox said.
She called it a “perfect storm,” in that wet, heavy snow blanketed a wide swath of the service area, spreading out crews and limiting capacity.
The first outage occurred about 7 p.m. Thursday and affected 64 customers, she said. The widespread outages began about 10 p.m. Thursday.
“Our crews have tackled a lot of the larger outages and are starting to get down to the outages that are impacting a couple hundred people or less,” Knox said at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
LPEA was 100% staffed, called in all of its contract workers and was receiving help from the San Luis Valley utility company in the Pagosa Springs area, she said.
“The snow is so heavy; it’s really wet like concrete,” Knox said. “It’s not the standard kind of dry-power snow that we get here, and it’s wreaking havoc, accordingly.”
Heavy snow causes power lines to bend, and when the snow falls off the lines, they bounce and clap together. That causes a recloser to open, similar to how a circuit breaker opens at private residences. That shuts off the flow of power for safety reasons.
In extreme cases, heavy snow can cause power poles to snap, but more often, it causes trees and tree limbs to rest on power lines.
“Anything that can go down will go down with really heavy snow on it,” Knox said.
Some residents had been without power for more than 14 hours, she said.
“We absolutely understand that people are starting to get not just cranky, but also concerned,” Knox said. “It’s getting dark, it’s getting cold.”
She said LPEA is unable to give estimates for when power outages might be restored, because each outage can be unique, and crews don’t know what they’re dealing with until they arrive at the scene. Fixing a circuit that opens takes less time than removing a tree from a power line or fixing a power pole, she said.
“Our general rule of thumb is that we prioritize outages that are impacting the largest numbers, and we prioritize outages that are a threat to public safety,” Knox said.
The city of Durango was largely spared from Friday’s power outages, she said, because most power lines are buried underground and therefore not susceptible to the weight of heavy snow.
“When you start to get out from the city and start to see more overhead lines,” Knox said, “there’s where we’re seeing a lot of the outages.”
shane@durangoherald.com
