It was a Saturday in April and Corey Dragge had heard the weather reports predicting extreme winds. By the time he arrived at work at Frasier, a senior living facility in Boulder, Colo., it was already a high-stress situation.
“The residents were saying there's going to be this massive power outage and we're going to lose power,” he said.
Dragge oversees facilities on the 20-acre retirement complex, which houses 500 elderly residents. The prospect of a significant power outage concerned him.
He called the power company, Xcel Energy. A representative told him they were shutting off the electricity to prevent their equipment from potentially starting a wildfire during the storm — a measure known as a “Public Safety Power Shutoff.” He was assured Frasier wouldn’t be affected. But within an hour, he got a call back.
“Oh yeah, by the way, you are going to be impacted,” Dragge was told.
He had an hour and 15 minutes until the lights went out.
“A lot of things need to happen, and they need to happen quickly,” he thought.
His staff fanned out, delivering blankets and flashlights. Backup generators would keep power flowing to crucial areas like medical facilities, an elevator in each building, and special outlets in residential hallways. But a lot would go dark, like the unit where Jo Ferguson lives.
At 80, Ferguson is vibrant, but she relies on oxygen and a CPAP machine at night. The one extension cord she had couldn't reach the backup power outlet in the hallway.
“If you don’t have that oxygen at night, you might not wake up the next morning — that's scary, that's just plain scary,” Ferguson said.
She spent one night without oxygen before her daughter delivered a 40-foot extension cord the next day. Power remained off at Frasier for nearly 30 hours. No residents were injured, but Ferguson is still upset by what happened.
“Leaving us in a vulnerable position, without forewarning and forearming us, I think is unconscionable,” she said.
In total, 55,000 customers in Northern Colorado lost power during this planned shutoff. Boulder businesses reported over a million dollars in lost revenue. Without power, the city’s wastewater treatment plant narrowly avoided having sewage overflowing into a creek. A few days later, Gov. Jared Polis expressed his “deep frustration” with Xcel and ordered an investigation.
Xcel acknowledged that its communication before and during the shutoff could have been better but said that de-energizing the lines likely prevented a wildfire. With winds reaching 100 miles per hour, several power poles snapped like toothpicks.
“Whenever there's damage like that, that is a potential ignition,” said Michael Lamb, the senior vice president for customer delivery at Xcel.
Still, Lamb said he understands customers’ frustration when the power goes out.
“Our DNA is to keep the lights on,” he said, “and, if they do go out for whatever reason, get them back on as soon as possible.”
The strategy to shut off power to mitigate wildfire risks began in California. Since the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, proactive power shutoffs have become routine in the state.
Now, they’re spreading to the Mountain West and other states like Hawaii and Texas. Xcel’s April shutoff was the first for Colorado. This summer, utilities in Idaho and Eastern Washington implemented similar measures for the first time to prevent wildfires, and a utility in Montana warned customers it might also cut power during high winds.
Scott Aaronson, the senior vice president for security and preparedness for the utility trade group Edison Electric Institute, said utilities consider these planned outages "a last resort," and are aware they come with serious downsides and dangers. But increasingly extreme weather events are changing the risk assessments.
“Climate change is resulting in higher winds, more extreme and extended droughts, more fuel loading, where the vegetation and trees and whatnot under electric lines are drying out,” Aaronson said.
Letha Tawney, a public utility commissioner in Oregon, said there’s another factor tipping the scales: lawsuits. Power companies are increasingly worried about being blamed for starting wildfires.
“The risk now that a utility is sued and a civil jury might find them negligent if they didn't turn the power off, really shapes the calculus about when to turn the power off,” said Tawney.
That’s what happened in her state. A jury in Oregon found PacifiCorp liable for failing to shut off its power lines before the 2020 Labor Day fires, despite warnings from state officials.
Xcel is now facing about 300 lawsuits over the 2021 Marshall Fire, the most destructive in Colorado history. The company denies that its equipment played a role in sparking the fire and has said the lawsuits are unrelated to its decision to issue the proactive shutoff.
In response to frequent shutoffs in California, Tawney’s commission in Oregon set rules that utilities have to follow when they preemptively cut power. That includes a timeline for communicating with emergency managers and customers in advance.
“Our job is to make sure when they have to use that tool, they do it as sort of safely and effectively as possible,” she said.
Xcel has submitted a new wildfire plan in Colorado aimed at reducing the need for power shutoffs in the future. It proposes using AI cameras to spot fires more quickly, deploying more weather stations to forecast risk, and adding switches to power lines to minimize the number of affected customers. It also outlines a communication strategy and a commitment to posting maps of outage areas. State regulators are reviewing this plan now.
Still, despite these efforts, it’s likely Public Safety Power Shutoffs will continue.
“It has to be in our toolbox,” said Lamb. “It has to be an option to use when the risk of wildfires is so extreme that, in the interest of public safety, we're better off turning the power off.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
