By Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling | Complete Colorado
Hundreds of thousands of Xcel Energy customers in Colorado recenlty lost power as high winds damaged power lines, and Xcel preemptively shut off the power to 55,000 customers to mitigate the risk of wildfires. Among the customers who lost power were homeowners and small businesses who received little to no warning.
The Denver Post detailed how families experienced entire refrigerators and freezers full of food spoiling, forcing them to refill them at a time when food costs are 25 percent higher than they were four years ago.
Business owners without power lost tens of thousands of dollars due to the outages, which stemmed from lost revenue from being unable to do business and lost products. Restaurant and grocery store owners were hit particularly hard as they scrambled to save as much of their inventory as they could with refrigerated trucks (which, thankfully, run on diesel fuel). Still, in many cases, the damage had already been done.