About 11,600 homes and businesses in and around Durango lost power Wednesday afternoon.
The mass outage began about 1:50 p.m. Wednesday and stretched from Durango West all the way north along U.S. Highway 550 past Trimble.
La Plata Electric Association spokeswoman Laura Schephis said crews were working to uncover the cause.
“Our teams have gone into action and are investigation the problem,” Schephis said. “We are focusing on figuring out the cause and safely restoring the problem.”
Schephis said LPEA’s teams had deployed to inspect transmission poles and monitor the entire system from the utility’s control center. As of 2:20 p.m., Schephis said, there was no update on the cause of the outage.
“An electrical system is a complex machine, and there are a lot of mechanical or natural environmental types of issues that can cause an outage,” Schephis said. “Our crews are top-notch and trained to analyze and deploy to get the power back on as quickly and safely as possible.”
Schephis said members can monitor for updates on the power outage on LPEA’s online outage viewer map.
This is a developing story. Check back with www.durangoherald.com for updates.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
