LONGMONT — Fewer than 20 Niwot and Gunbarrel homes and businesses — out of the 7,200 affected — remained without natural gas Sunday night as Xcel crews worked through the weekend to restore services.
The area lost services after a crippling equipment failure early Friday morning.
Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz said about 300 employees went door-to-door Saturday, overnight and into Sunday morning to restore gas.
By Sunday morning, 197 residences and businesses still were without gas, and heat, he said. That number was reduced to about 40 locations still without service Sunday afternoon — all places where crews had been unable to gain access, he said.
Losing services during an arctic cold snap proved difficult for many of those affected. Some also took issue with how Xcel handled the situation. The company sent out a phone message to customers Friday night, telling them to be in their homes so that crews could get inside to ignite pilot lights — but in many cases those crews didn’t come, residents said.
On Saturday night, the city of Boulder and Left Hand Water District shut off water to about 20 Gunbarrel homes in hopes of preventing property damage related to the outage, said Boulder public works spokesman Mike Banuelos.
He said Xcel hadn’t been able to contact anyone at the homes, and there was a concern that pipes would burst.
“We wanted to help them out in case they were out of town,” he said.
Affected water customers should call 303-441-3245 once their gas is back on to have their water service restored.
Stutz said the outage was caused by the failure of a piece of equipment at a natural gas regulator station near Niwot. The piece that failed regulates the flow of natural gas downstream to customers.
