More than 36 hours after losing power during an intense spring snowstorm, Rawlins and other communities along the Interstate 80 corridor in Carbon County were still without electricity.
Fortunate for most people, the bulk of the outage has been restored by Tuesday afternoon. Rocky Mountain Power workers were repairing the damaged transmission line that caused the outage, which they had been working on since 3 p.m. Monday.
“The Carbon County Dispatch Center, jail, and courthouse are all running on primary power now,” Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken told Cowboy State Daily.
"There's still some minor localized outages in the Rawlins area, but it appears the bulk of power is restored at this time," he said.
Bakken and his team worked throughout the night to complete their regular duties while also responding to dozens of drivers stuck on I-80 because of the winter conditions.
“It got pretty ticklish pretty quick,” he said. “A large-scale incident doesn't necessarily mean that the normal calls stopped coming in. It was a ton of moving pieces, but Rawlins is open.”
Rough Start
Bakken knew he was in for a tough day when he set out to start coordinating the response to the outage in Carbon County. His own truck got stuck in the snow.
“It was about 6:30 a.m., and I got my patrol truck stuck,” he said. “I went back to my house, got a side-by-side, and took that to our dispatch center to set up our incident command post.”
The incident command post was activated at 7:30 a.m. Monday. It wasn’t deactivated until 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Much of Bakken’s day was occupied with the widespread power outage caused by the intensity of the wet, heavy snow across Carbon County. Interstate 80 was shut down Monday morning, stranding hundreds of drivers on the snow-covered highway.
The Wyoming Department of Transportation was hampered as well. The power outage prevented the agency from refueling its plow trucks, which delayed efforts to clear I-80.
Bakken and his deputies spent much of Monday rescuing drivers stranded on I-80.
“We had our tracked Search and Rescue vehicle ferrying people who had been stranded for prolonged periods of time off the interstate,” he said. “Some people had been stranded for over 13 hours and were running out of fuel.”
More than 45 people, mostly families and elderly people, were taken to the Jeffrey Community Center in Rawlins for heat and shelter while the outage continued. Everyone else was encouraged to hunker down until the power was restored.
“It was a pretty good mix of stranded and locals who needed heat,” Bakken said. “Our population expanded a little bit last night, for sure.”
Power wasn’t restored to Sinclair until 3:52 a.m. Tuesday. The Carbon County Unified Dispatch Center wasn’t back on primary power until 6:47 a.m.
Fast And Furious
The chaos on Monday was a direct result of the wet, heavy snow that fell across southern Wyoming between Sunday night and Tuesday morning.
Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day called it “a high-end storm.”
“I’m having a hard time getting reports out of Carbon County because people haven't had power to report anything,” he said. “From the pictures I’ve seen, Rawlins and the surrounding area got about a foot or more of snow.”
Day said snowpack sensors throughout southcentral Wyoming detected between 2 and 3 inches of water equivalent from the spring storm’s snowfall. That translates to between 1 and 2 feet of snow.
“Some areas of the Snowy Range got up to 30 inches,” he said. “Some parts of southern Wyoming have already reached their average for the month of May, and maybe even gone above that.”
Wet spring snow is fantastic for increasingly dry areas, as it permeates the ground quickly. However, it’s also a nightmare for infrastructure such as highways and power lines.
Day said the power outage and interstate closure were due to the weight and fury of the snowfall. Wet, heavy snow falls and accumulates faster, which can quickly cause significant problems.
“The snow was coming down at a rate of 1 or 2 inches per hour,” he said. “It gathers power lines and structures because it’s sticky and has so much weight.”
John Whitesides with Rocky Mountain Power said the Rawlins outage was caused by a broken crossarm halfway between the Platte and Whiskey Peak substations in Carbon County.
The crossarm was broken in the early morning hours on Monday, with the first report coming from Rawlins at 2:27 a.m.
“We have one transmission line that feeds those communities,” Whitesides said. “When we have a damaged line, there’s no power coming into homes and businesses.”
A repair crew wasn’t able to reach the damaged crossarm until 3 p.m. Monday. It also was delayed by heavy snow on the roads.
“When it’s falling that fast and furious, you can’t keep up,” Day said.
Cellular Crisis
While Bakken was trying to deal with the immediate issues from the spring snowstorm, they were having persistent cellular service problems that persisted into Tuesday.
“We were experiencing issues with outgoing calls from Verizon coming into our communications center,” he said. “We were receiving all incoming calls without issues, but outgoing calls to Verizon numbers weren’t going through.”
On Tuesday, the situation got worse. The Carbon County Sheriff’s Office, Rawlins Police Department, Saratoga Police Department, and Memorial Hospital of Carbon County experienced issues with their service provider, CenturyLink/Lumen, affecting their phone lines.
“Incoming and outgoing administrative lines are not functioning properly,” Bakken said. “The majority of our 911 calls are functioning with the exception of cell phones in the Saratoga area. These 911 calls are being temporarily routed through the Saratoga Town Hall and transferred to the Carbon County Unified Dispatch Center.”
As of 1 p.m. Tuesday, the situation had not yet been resolved.
A Moment Of Levity
While people were rescued from the snow-covered I-80 and Rawlins residents struggled to stay warm, Bakken and his deputies had to deal with the usual calls they receive on a daily basis.
However, even by their standards, Monday was unusual.
“We did have a call for an injured seagull at a truck stop, which is unique,” Bakken said. “We don't get that one very often, so that was a moment of levity in the midst of all the chaos.”
By Tuesday morning, Sinclair had power, and Rocky Mountain Power was slowly restoring electricity across Rawlins. They were still addressing some outage issues on Tuesday afternoon, which demonstrates the extent and severity of Monday’s outage.
“They’ve got to clear a lot of the hazards out of each section before they return power fully, in case there's a downed wire or something of that nature along the line,” Bakken said.
Bakken praised the effectiveness of his deputies and everyone else who stepped up to handle the unexpectedly intense crisis in Carbon County. They’ve trained for these scenarios, but the only way to know how well everything and everyone works together is in an authentic crisis.
“We train, have protocols and policies, and do our best to make sure we're prepared for every contingency,” Bakken said. “Sometimes, things are unique and interesting dynamics happen that we're not always expecting. Yesterday was definitely one of those days. It was a bit of a pickle, but we worked through it.”
And what about Bakken’s patrol truck?
“My son pulled it out while I was running the incident command post,” he said. “I got it very stuck, but we were able to get it unstuck.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
