About 2,600 customers in the Pine River Valley were without power early Saturday morning after a strong thunderstorm passed through the area. The power was restored to all customers at 3:30 p.m., almost 9½ hours later.
As of 10:45 a.m., the count was down to 2,321 customers at Lemon and Vallecito areas and Forest Lakes, who had been without power since 5:48 a.m. They had hoped power would be restored by 1 p.m.
The problem, La Plata Electric Association spokeswoman Indiana Reed said, is that many of the customers in the area are supplied by Tri-State Generation and Transmission, and it is Tri-State’s equipment that was damaged.
LPEA picked up as much of the load as it could, about 300 customers, but it had met its capacity in the area at that point.
Originally, there was some thought an animal might have crawled into the substation and caused the outage, but the crew now believes it was a lightning strike, Reed said.
All customers should have power, she said.
abutler@durangoherald.com
