A downed power line in Sunshine Canyon in the mountains west of Boulder in December posed an electrocution risk to firefighters and bystanders after Xcel Energy re-energized it without repairing it, despite being notified of the break the day before.

Then, local officials added, it posed a wildfire risk by starting a small grass fire.

The line had gone down when Xcel Energy deliberately cut power to a wide swath of Front Range communities, citing extreme wildfire weather to prevent equipment from sparking a blaze that could become a destructive or even deadly conflagration.

“If the winds hadn’t calmed, that fire could have jumped the road,” Sunshine Fire Protection District Chief Michael Schmitt said. “Otherwise, that fire would’ve jumped the road and would’ve pushed up towards Pinebrook Hills.”

“A line should never, ever be energized when it’s been reported as damaged,” Schmitt told The Gazette.

A Public Safety Power Shutoff, or PSPS, is a deliberate last-resort tool that is now being increasingly deployed along the Front Range, which perennially has high wind gusts.

The approach has been sanctioned by Colorado’s energy regulators, and power companies and their allies have argued that they are a necessary strategy, given dry conditions and high winds, which could turn a spark into a deadly event.

Critics have countered that utilities should instead focus on making their infrastructure resilient to extreme weather, instead of turning off people’s power, with its grave repercussions for residents and businesses.

At a recent legislative hearing, Xcel Energy Colorado President Robert Kenney said that, when extreme winds, low humidity and bone-dry fuels align, his utility must cut power to prevent equipment from sparking a fire that could quickly blow up into a major wildfire.

After the National Weather Service issued Colorado’s first “particularly dangerous situation” red-flag warning for the Front Range, Xcel Energy instituted two Public Safety Power Shutoffs on Dec. 17 and again on Dec. 19. The predicted winds mirrored those that preceded the deadly 2018 Camp fire in California, which burned more than 153,000 acres and killed 85 people.

Restoration took days because crews must physically inspect every mile of line before re-energizing — a mandatory safety step that prevents the ignitions a PSPS is meant to avoid.

Schmitt, the fire chief, said his fire department has hardened its own infrastructure with reinforced buildings and backup generators to withstand the extraordinary winds in the canyon. He urged the power company to do similar upgrades by installing insulated wire to reduce sparking and higher-rated poles.

“Ironically, all or most of the poles in our district have been replaced in the last couple years,” Schmitt added. “They’re new, and even the new ones are not rated for more than 90 mph.”

“We had what we think were close to 125 mph winds,” said Schmitt.

In a statement from Xcel Energy, company spokesperson Michelle Aguayo rebutted Schmitt’s allegation: “We build to the highest standard in the Nation Electric Safety Code and the poles we’re using in the highest wildfire risk areas can withstand winds approaching 130 mph. With that said, winds up to 125 mph are considered Category 3 Hurricane winds and any overhead electrical equipment would potentially experience damage from both wind and debris in such conditions.”

“Our meteorologists observed wind gusts of up to 112 mph during the December 2025 Public Safety Power Shutoff events,” Aguayo added.

In an interview with The Gazette, Schmitt added that two days later, a downed powerline in Four Mile Canyon was also improperly reenergized, starting a larger fire. Fortunately, he said, it was in the evening and there were firefighters close by. The fire was stopped only 5 feet from a garage. Schmitt said if the garage had caught on fire, the community might have lost six homes in a densely vegetated canyon.

Communications in the mountainous rural area are unreliable, with cell service often not available. After backup batteries in the digital phone system that depends on electric power were exhausted, some residents had no way to communicate with the outside world, said Schmitt.

Public Safety Power Shutoffs are a last-resort measure, said Xcel Energy officials.

Kenney, the Xcel executive, defended his company’s actions during a legislative hearing in January.

“We made the right operational decision for public safety,” Kenney told lawmakers. “These were the exact same kinds of winds seen just prior to the Eaton and Palisades fires in Southern California.”

He acknowledged the hardship the decision brings, adding the company has expanded support for vulnerable customers, including rebates for battery backups and partnerships with the American Red Cross to open comfort centers during outages.

He said the ultimate goal is clear — make any future shutoffs smaller, shorter and less frequent while protecting public safety, adding the company is making investments to achieve that objective.

The practice of deliberately shutting off power was first used in California after the 2018 Camp fire, when PG&E began using the strategy to prevent equipment from sparking blazes during Santa Ana winds. The fire had killed 85 people.

Colorado Springs Utilities differs

Black Hills Energy provides electricity to areas directly south of Colorado Springs including Pueblo, Canon City and Rocky Ford.

Campbell Hawkins, the vice president of Black Hills Energy’s Colorado operations, said that the company established PSPS policies for Colorado and Wyoming last year as they became more common across the Western United States.

Black Hills has gone into the power shutoff protocols twice. One incident did not ultimately result in pausing power service. The other, which took place earlier this year, did shut off power to less than 100 Pueblo residents for around four hours. Hawkins said the utility had kept strong communication with its customers and Pueblo emergency services during that incident.

“Under ideal situations, we progress through them much like a tornado warning. We start with a monitoring phase, then have a watch phase and a warning phase for customers, and then we actually deenergize,” Hawkins said.

Bryan Babcock, field operations general manager for Colorado Springs Utilities, said that the municipal utility created its first official wildfire mitigation plan last year. The plan states that power shutoffs would not be triggered until the most extreme wildfire conditions and places a larger focus on risk assessment and monitoring of power line quality.

“We are constantly assessing the state of that infrastructure and do mitigating activities to ensure that is not going to, or is less likely to, create an ignition related to its operation,” Babcock said.

One alternative used by Colorado Springs Utilities during the times of high fire risk is activating enhanced powerline safety settings. Babcock explained that when a line temporarily loses power from something like a falling tree branch, a reclosure device will normally automatically try to restore power along the wire.

The advanced setting turns that feature off when conditions increase the fire risk and leaves the wire unused during a natural power interruption until a crew can manually inspect it. Babcock said that feature has been activated multiple times in Colorado Springs so far this year.