Heavy snow the past few days caused a host of headaches for La Plata Electric Association as it strives to keep the power on.
Hillary Knox, spokeswoman for LPEA, said outages started around 6 p.m. Saturday and have continued throughout the day Monday.
The first major outage was on Saturday, north of Durango, around Hermosa when about 250 people lost their power from 6 p.m. until about 9:30 p.m. after an insulator broke.
“We ran our crews around the clock just to get everyone back in power,” Knox said. “For the most part, we got everyone back on in a couple of hours after they went out.”
Then, about 90 homes around Vallecito lost power. Some of those homes remained without electricity early Monday, but as of Monday afternoon, it appears all power has been restored.
Since Saturday, Knox said about 500 customers have lost power.
“It wasn’t any one big outage, it’s just a whole bunch of smaller, scattered outages,” she said.
The cause of the outages is related to the snowstorm that hit the region the past few days, Knox said, because heavy snow on the lines can cause power lines to break. Freezing temperatures and high winds can affect infrastructure, too.
“Our guys are in a constant state of surveying miles and miles of lines throughout the district,” Knox said. “But we expect some outages at this time of year.”
Knox said LPEA is rotating crews to be handle the workload. As of 2 p.m. Monday, the association was not reporting any outages.
“We make sure to take care of our crews to make sure they’re not working crazy hours,” she said. “But our guys have definitely been staying busy.”
jromeo@durangoherald.com
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