Twin Cities West Metro Hit Hardest During Recent Storms

Posted by Wendy Erlien, written by Stefanie Briggs. 

The storm damage clean up continues, but many people in the west metro are still without power.

Looking at the map of power outages on Xcel Energy's website, it looks like the west metro has been one of the hardest hit areas, as of 9:30 a.m. Monday, June 24.
 
"There's about 49,000 out in the west metro and 57,000 system-wide," said Minnesota Xcel Energy Spokesman Tom Hoen. "The hardest hit areas look to be Golden Valley, Plymouth, Minnetonka and Maple Grove."

Right now Xcel Energy has upwards of 1,000 linemen from 14 different states on the ground working on restoring power, he said.
 
"We're wrapping up getting everyone back up," Hoen said. "Once an area is back up we don't just pack up and go home. We saturate each area to make sure is back up and running."

How does Xcel determine where to go first?

"Our first priority is always public safety so wherever there is a live downed wire we always handle those places first," Hoen said. "Then we go to critical care structures like hospitals, fire departments, daycares and the like."

To serve its customers, Xcel then works on a system of going to the areas where they can bring power to the most people at one time.

"If we can put 1,500 people with power at one time we'll go there before we go somewhere with only 50 people," he said.

According to a June 24 Xcel statement: "As of 6 a.m. today Xcel has restored power to 571,000 of its customers. Crews are working 16 hour days."

Are you still without power? What kind of damage remains where you are?