Due to heavy snow causing downed trees, nearly 3,000 people in Laramie lost power Thursday evening. Rocky Mountain Power is the town’s electricity provider. Dave Eskelsen, a media relations officer with Rocky Mountain Power, said several outages occurred.
One at 7:05 p.m. affecting 2,692 customers and another near 2:57 a.m. The heavy snow caused trees or tree limbs to fall on power lines, which automatically triggers a stop to the flow of power.
Near 7:40 p.m., a crew had to open up a circuit again, causing 576 customers to lose their power. Eskelson said some people’s power likely came back on at that time, with others turning off.
He said the quality of the storm had a lot to do with the power outages.
"Late storms where the storms are wetter and heavier often takes down tree limbs despite the fact that we run a tree clearance program year-round,” he said.
A crew from Casper came down to help Laramie operators restore power. Several major roads closed including I-80 and U.S. 287. Eskelsen asked that customers be patient during outages as downed power lines can be labor intensive to restore.
Eskelsen adds total restoration is still uncertain, but crews from Laramie and Casper are working on it now.
