A widespread power outage left about 6,000 customers without electricity for nearly two hours Tuesday across much of Durango and surrounding areas, according to La Plata Electric Association.
The outage occurred shortly before 3 p.m. It was attributed to equipment failure at a substation in Greenmount Cemetery, said Indiana Reed, spokeswoman with LPEA.
Power was restored at 4:43 p.m.
The outage affected most of downtown and extended north into the Animas Valley and west toward Lightner Creek. Some businesses shut down during the outage, unable to run cash registers or other equipment.
FastTrack, an Internet provider in Durango, also was without power, which slowed Internet speeds, Reed said.
Durango Joe’s coffee shop at 40 Town Plaza along Camino del Rio was able to sell only drip coffee and pastries, said Christa McMahon, lead manager.
“Some people would come in and ask for hot chocolate: Like all we want is hot chocolate,” she said with a look of exasperation.
Employees were sharpening their math skills, accepting cash and making change out of the register. “We have this,” she said “the old-fashioned credit card machine that hardly anyone knows how to use.”
Several traffic signalswere out, and there was a report of people briefly caught in an elevator.
The outage area seemed somewhat sporadic: The Durango Public Library was out of power, but Durango High School five blocks north had power. Hermosa, 10 miles north of Durango was out of power, while Hesperus, 12 miles west of town, did have power.
The nearly two hour outage didn’t affect business much at south City Market, said Troy Cordell, store manager. “It’s about the same,” he said.
The store’s cash registers were on a generator and functional, but if the outage lasted more than three hours or so, he said some protective measures would have to be taken with the refrigerated food.
It was a problem Trevor Wilson, the manager at Baskin-Robbins in Town Plaza, could sympathize with.
“We closed to keep the night covers closed to keep the ice cream from melting,” he said.
It was a large outage considering the number of customers affected and that it impacted the downtown, which has a large concentration of people during the day, Reed said.
“We’ve certainly had outages that have lasted longer,” she said. “But that was quite a few customers without power.”
Peter Schertz, co-owner of Maria’s Bookshop, said customers were using the flashlights in their smartphones to see.
Stephanie Graveson, a bookseller, said the outage gave the day a “snow day feel.”
“Everything slowed down. We could spend more time with customers,” she said.
Angie Davis, bartender at El Rancho Tavern, said the outage “made happy hour a little happier.”
“As long as you’ve got cash, we’ll serve you,” she said. “I think we got a little busier than normal. If you’re a hardworking man and you couldn’t work, you came in a little earlier.”
shane@durangoherald.com
