Power was restored slowly to residents of the Hillcrest and Skyridge neighborhoods Monday after 1,022 La Plata Electric Association customers were left without electricity at 12:40 p.m.
“It was slow going because the lines are underground instead of overhead,” spokeswoman Indiana Reed said. “But the cause was a fault in the wiring.”
Crews methodically isolated sections of the line looking for the problem, Reed said. If no glitch was found, power was restored to the area, she said.
Electricity can be restored section by section if a line has “redundancy,” meaning power is available from both ends of the line, she said.
The majority of Durango neighborhoods have redundancy, Reed said. Unincorporated areas are a different story.
All but 265 customers had power again by 2:30 p.m., Reed said. Only 156 were without power by 4:15 p.m., and the final 50 customers could turn on the lights at about 8:30 p.m.
At the time of the outage, all the crews knew was that something tripped the system, she said.
daler@durangoherald.com
