Widespread power outage closes Clear Creek County schools, businesses in Colorado's mountains

Thousands of people living in Clear Creek County in Colorado's mountain community woke up without power on Thursday morning. The outage impacting nearly 4,000 people started at 3:10 a.m. and was expected to be fully restored by 1:30 p.m. 

The outage impacted homes, businesses, schools, and government offices. Xcel Energy has confirmed the outage was caused by its Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings Program, a system that turns off the power to lines when sensing equipment "detects an issue such as a tree branch or other object contacting a powerline."

Additional options can include high wind speeds, and considering neighboring towns saw gusts just one mile under hurricane force winds early Thursday morning, it's a real possibility that was the cause, although Xcel is not able to confirm that right now.

Xcel said part of what takes time to get the power back on when the system is activated are that crews need to get eyes on the entire length of the line before they can repower it to make sure they won't be causing any issues, like catching a tree branch on fire that's hanging over the line (which is not what they found in this case.) In especially mountainous regions like Clear Creek County, it can take those crews a little longer to see the whole area and check it before getting things running again. 

Closures and delays were expected throughout Thursday. All schools in the district were closed Thursday due to the power outage. 

Clear Creek County government offices posted on X that its offices will be closed for the day on Thursday due to the power outage.  

Power was restored to Idaho Springs by 9:30 a.m. but other communities like Georgetown remained without power on Thursday morning.