Audrianna Hart, a Boulder resident who has an almost 9-month-old baby, scrambled over the weekend to figure out how to keep a stash of frozen breast milk from spoiling when the power went out.

Her neighborhood association had alerted residents a few hours before their home’s power went out, but, since it was a weekend and they weren’t actively checking their email, they didn’t find out until right beforehand, Hart said. 

“We didn’t have the ability to be well informed and make decisions earlier in the day,” she said. “We were expecting it to last 24 hours and it was more than that.”

Hart was one of roughly 55,000 customers who lost power after Xcel deliberately shut it down as a precaution — the energy company wanted to minimize the risk of wildfires. About 100,000 more experienced power outages caused by the high winds.

On Monday, Xcel said more than 500 crew members were out checking some 600 miles of power lines so they can be reenergized. The company said it expects to have 90% of power restored by Monday night.

Customers’ frustration was palpable to Gov. Jared Polis, who urged people to be “nice” to the utility workers.   

“I understand everyone’s frustration with Xcel’s decision to cut power this weekend but please use patience and kindness to frontline Utility workers working to RESTORE power to the community,” Polis said on X, the social media platform. “They weren’t the ones who made the decision. They’re just trying to restore power and many of them are working overtime, so let’s be nice.”

In Lakewood, Dani Epper, a resident of the Applewood neighborhood, told The Denver Gazette on Monday afternoon they had been without power for 34 hours — and counting. 

“We had been planning on going grocery shopping and getting things done around the house, and those plans went out the window,” Epper said. “By Sunday night, we accepted that we are going to have to throw out almost all our food and went to a friend’s (place) to charge up and have dinner.”

Epper said they had submitted multiple outage reports to Xcel but received no estimate on when power would be be back. They got a phone call on Sunday night saying the outage would continue into Monday. 

Denver Gazette news partner 9News cited Xcel as saying it made efforts to notify customers Friday night, but people like Hart said they did not receive notice until a few hours prior to the outage.

As power went down on Saturday afternoon, so did traffic lights across Boulder, causing crashes and chaos throughout the city. 

Drivers, who are supposed to treat out-of-commission traffic lights as four-way stops, blew through intersections without pause. 

“People aren’t paying attention and treating the traffic lights that are out and don’t have power as four-way stops,” Boulder County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Vinnie Montez said on social media, adding that county had several crashes.

Meanwhile, grocery stores were packed with people buying ice, batteries, canned food and other essentials; power went out in many stores, as well. 

To Hart, the biggest frustration came from the lack of updates and inability to reach Xcel. Nonetheless, she felt lucky that she didn’t have insulin or some other life preserving medication that needed to be kept cold, she said. 

Ariella Nardizzi, a Boulder resident who also lives in the outage zone, shared Hart’s frustration about the lack of communication and said she only got about two hours notice that Xcel was going to shut their power off. They didn’t get power back until late Sunday.

Nardizzi and her partner were both away from their apartment when they got the notification, leaving them scrambling to get home and prepare in the two hours before power was cut, she said.

“While I was grateful that the decision to cut power in order to prevent wildfires worked, it was frustrating that Xcel didn’t give us more notice, especially when high winds had been expected and forecasted for a week,” Nardizzi said. 

Most of the food in their refrigerator was spoiled, but Nardizzi also said she felt lucky that they didn’t have any medical needs requiring power. 

During the outage, Xcel sent Nardizzi and her partner unclear messages about the outage and when it would end, she said. They turned to social media to get information from other area residents, who seemed just as confused as she was, she added. 

“The biggest frustration was Xcel’s lack of communication,” she said. “There was a lot of uncertainty, which impacted my working from home and level of preparedness. I’m fortunate that we could rely on friends with power and didn’t have any medical emergencies that required power either.”

North Boulder residents Katie Walden and her partner got a call from Xcel alerting them that their power would be shut off three hours in advance, she said. 

By the time they got to the store, all of the ice was gone, she said.

They hoped the groceries they had just purchased would last through the outage. Twenty-two hours later, they got power back but all of their food had spoiled, she said. 

“It’s so stressful because I don’t make much money and can’t really afford to replace everything in the fridge,” Walden said. “All of our groceries were new since we’d just shopped the week before.”

Like many, Walden said she understood that the move was to prevent wildfires and she appreciates that, but she wished Xcel had given them more notice so they could prepare properly. 

Melissa Locy, the owner of Flatiron Coffee in Boulder, said her store’s power did not get shut off and she saw a dramatic spike in business throughout the day, as residents around the city rushed to find places to work, stay warm and access the internet.

“We were wicked busy because everyone else lost power,” Locy said. “We had sales that were 160% higher than normal, that’s how busy we were.”

Boulder Valley School District sent a message out to families and staff Sunday morning, saying power still had not been restored to seven of their schools, including Coal Creek Elementary, Eisenhower Elementary, Nederland Elementary, Nederland Middle-Senior High School, Gold Hill Elementary, Jamestown Elementary and Platt Middle School. 

Epper, the Lakewood resident, wondered if the outage really needed to take that long to fix. 

“I want to trust that it’s a strategy that was beneficial. I feel like I have not heard about any fires from lines, which seems good,” Epper said. “I am questioning if the strategy has anything to do with the longevity of our area’s outage, or if we just had more damage.”

Epper added: “I think the length of this outage is the biggest thing. Most people had never had one this long before and were not prepared on how to handle it.”