Tens of thousands of customers were without power in Colorado’s Vail Valley on Tuesday night after a lightning strike knocked out transmission lines, Holy Cross Energy officials said.
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The energy cooperative said it was not sure whether electricity could be restored before Wednesday.
The large outage is affecting more than 27,000 customers along the Interstate 70 corridor, including in Vail, Avon, Eagle and Gypsum, according to the cooperative’s outage map. The cooperative has approximately 45,000 members.
Holy Cross Energy first reported the outage on its website at 4:15 p.m. and said it would work with Xcel Energy to restore the power. An hour later, the cooperative said Xcel workers were patrolling the transmission line and had requested a helicopter to help with those inspections.
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At 8:26 p.m., Holy Cross said Xcel had determined the outage was caused by a lightning strike and that crews were hiking in to repair the transmission lines.
“They should know within the next couple of hours if the line can be repaired tonight or if a helicopter will be needed tomorrow,” Holy Cross officials wrote. “We will update you as soon as we learn more.”
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