Poudre Valley REA crews worked until midnight Wednesday and returned to the field at daybreak Thursday to repair power lines downed by the first heavy snowfall of the season. Power had been restored to about 5,000 people overnight, according to co-op officials, but scattered outages remain in and around Red Feather Lakes and Crystal Lakes. Businesses in downtown Red Feather have power, as does the Red Feather Lakes Community Library where kids trick-or-treated Thursday morning.
“We’re well under 2,000 without power now,” PVREA spokesman Ric Soulen told the North Forty News at 11 a.m. “We have crews in Red Feather and they will keep working in the area before moving on (to the nearest main feeder line). We’re concentrating on getting power back to as many members as we can rather than on any one particular area.
The main feeder line to Livermore has already been repaired, Soulen said. He estimated that most of the power would be restored to the foothills portion of PVREA’s service territory by Thursday afternoon.
PVREA has also established a new Outage Emergency Hotline — at 866-260-4024 — to better deal with calls from the Fort Collins area.
“The 800- number just wasn’t handling the volume of calls we were receiving on Wednesday,” explained Soulen, who added that this new line is just for PVREA members to report outages, not to find out information about ongoing repairs.
Soulen also said that PVREA has deployed three crews from Mountain View Electric to help with the repairs as well as 10 additional contractors. The hardest hit areas remain west of Loveland and in Weld County near Kersey.
Xcel Energy also reported more than 8,500 customers without power in the Fort Collins area Thursday morning, with outages continuing in parts of Bellvue, LaPorte, Wellington and north Fort Collins as of 11 a.m.
While crews are currently working in those areas, the company does not expect full restoration of service until at least noon Friday, according to its website. At the peak of the storm, more than 200,000 Xcel customers in Colorado were without power.
To report power outages, Xcel customers should call 800-895-1999.