Denver residents team up with Red Cross, Xcel Energy to help resource center in Evergreen
City Ice, a family-owned business in Denver, was loading up Saturday afternoon for another trip to the foothills. The ice was being delivered to several restaurants in the foothills trying to save their food during a continued power outage.
"I'm loading 1,100 pounds of ice that's going to Boulder," said Anthony Aguirre.
Staff at City Ice have been working overtime to try to meet demand.
"I came in on both of my off days and stayed more than our eight-hour shift," said Aguirre.
Just in the last few days, his wife, Danielle, estimates they've sold 20 to 30 pounds of dry ice alone, and as soon as wet ice becomes available, it's sold. The company also answered the call from the American Red Cross, which teamed up with Xcel Energy to deliver ice to the Evergreen resource center, a temporary shelter at the Evergreen Fire Department providing emergency supplies and power for charging devices.
"For the people that can't make it down to us to come and pick up ice for themselves," said Danielle Aguirre.
"It's great to have this as a resource, because you also get reassured everybody's in this together," said Daphne Martin, who was at the resource center on Saturday.
While at the resource center, fire truck sirens sounding as a crew headed out on a call served as a reminder of why the shutoffs are occurring. On a typical day, the Evergreen Fire Department responds to about 8-10 calls, according to Stacee Martin, the department's public information officer.
"On Friday alone, we ran over 60 calls for electrical lines down," said Stacee Martin. "So, in my mind, each one of those electric lines down could have been a small fire or a large fire, because of the way the wind was going."
It's another example of community members working around the clock to answer the call.
"We've been just hustling crews all over our 126 square miles of our fire protection area," she added. "We have close to 100 volunteer firefighters that have day jobs, but a lot of them took either a sick day or a personal day to help their community."
The fire department presents its own perspective on the outages.
"Boy, it sure helped our community," said Stacee Martin.
Although power is slowly turning back on in the area, a spokesperson for the Red Cross told CBS Colorado the resource center at the Evergreen Fire Department will be open from 9 a.m. to noon on Sunday, but the hub set up at Gilpin County School in Blackhawk will remain open 24 hours until everyone's power is back on.
