From her cold, dark house – without power since Tuesday in her Pine subdivision near U.S. 285 – Jeri Alderete finds it galling to see well-lighted homes across the street.
“I’ve been through Hurricane Katrina and all that, so I know what tragedy is, and this is not a tragedy,” she says.
“But what gets me, and most of about 300 of us here, is we can see the lights on across the street, and up on highway 285. And when we call the power company, you get a recording that tells you to leave your number so they can get back to you when the power comes on. Like we’ll need that call then.”
The Alderetes are among an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Intermountain Rural Electric Association customers who remain without power in homes from Sedalia to Pine.
A spring snowstorm hit the south-metro area and foothills with wet snow so heavy that it pulled down trees, power lines and supporting utility poles.
Bill Schroeder, IREA’s manager of public affairs, said snow damage left approximately 4,000 IREA customers without power on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Ron Hilton of Evergreen Highlands, a foothills subdivision, was among about 750 Xcel Energy customers who lost power during the same period.
“I came home on Tuesday to no power, and I woke up this morning with no power,” Hilton said Wednesday. His electricity was restored midday Thursday.
“I don’t feel they have ‘Xcelled’ during this outage.”
Xcel Energy spokesman Mark Stutz said power had been restored by late Thursday afternoon to most customers.
Thursday, IREA crews restored power to about half of the customers who lost power after the storm, Schroeder said.
“We were hoping to get more people on this evening, but it looks like there are more poles down, more lines down and more trees down in the Conifer area than we expected. If we keep our fingers crossed, we’ll get people back on line tomorrow (Friday) night or Saturday morning. There could be some people who don’t get their power back until late Saturday night or possibly Sunday morning.”
That provided cold comfort to the Alderetes and others whose homes are situated 10 miles or more from the nearest substation.
“We’ve lived here 25 years – lived through the blizzard of ’82, and 8 feet of snow a couple years ago, and to me, this is just inexcusable,” said Lynn Stumpf, who lives near Aspen Park.
Staff writer Gabriela Resto-Montero and 9News contributed to this story.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
