The state Public Regulation Commission is investigating the causes of repeated power outages that affected 25,000 Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative consumers in Rio Arriba and northern Santa Fe counties this month, and will release a utilty company report on the outage when the investigation is complete, Commission Spokesman Paul Carbajal said.
“At this point, we’re just seeking information for the Commission,” Carbajal said. “But there could be fines and other accountability issues down the road. Right now we’re just trying to identify the core issues behind the outages. Was it just a mishap, or is there a larger problem?”
Another goal of the investigation is to improve Co-op communication with the public during outages, he said.
“We want better communication with residents during outages, especially the schools, pueblos and hospitals,” Carbajal said. “We are developing a utility report form for co-ops to report the exact causes and remedies to make sure outages are short-lived.”
The outages were traced by the SUN in part to delayed repairs at the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s Hernandez station.
Co-op board members were circumspect about the investigation.
“I don’t know nothing about all that,” Manuel Garcia said.
After a long pause, Co-op and Tri-State Board member Ralph Garcia said simply, “That’s news to me.”
“I don’t think they are investigating Jemez,” Board member LeRoy Ortiz said. “They’re looking into Tri-State. It was Tri-State’s equipment (that had problems).”
But Carbajal said that was inaccurate.
“We are looking at both Tri-State and the Co-op,” Carbajal clarified. “Tri-State does provide a lot of power to the co-ops and we are still determining whether the problem was local, with the Co-op, or at a broader Tri-State level. We’ve asked Tri-State and the Co-op to speak with our legal staff and answer questions.”
At a Dec. 18 Co-op board meeting, Ortiz called on Ralph Garcia to demand a more thorough explanation from Tri-State regarding the cause of the outages. But Garcia said he had not done so.
“One of the Co-op directors said I should do that, but I don’t think he understands my duties as a Tri-State director,” he said. “I represent Jemez up there (at Tri-State), but I’m there on behalf of Tri-State.”
Medical issues are another major concern for investigators, Carbajal said.
“There were significant concerns for elderly people with medical conditions,” he said. “Our Consumer Relations Division got reports that people dependent on home oxygen therapy had the oxygen pump batteries fail (during the 13 hour outage Dec. 9).”
“We had five elderly clients who needed additional emergency oxygen tanks,” Del Norte Home Medical Supply Store Manager Edna Serna confirmed. “Part of our emergency protocol is to call every client who is on oxygen therapy during power outages. We ask if their electricity is out and if they need us to bring out more oxygen tanks.”
The store is in Española, but most of Serna’s clients are located in other Rio Arriba County towns and villages, Serna said. “We took a few emergency tanks to clients around Española and Chimayó, Cordova and Truchas.”
Del Norte store employee Jeanelle Quintana braved the snows to take tanks to another elderly patient in Coyote.
“It took about an hour and a half,” Quintana said. “There was a lot of snow. But our client had just been released from Los Alamos Medical Center and is on oxygen therapy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If we hadn’t gotten the new tanks to her, she would’ve had to have called an ambulance.”
Española Hospital has its own liquid oxygen supply and was not adversely affected by the outage, hospital Facilities manager Larry Martinez said.
“We have a 500 gallon emergency generator that burns about 20 gallons of diesel an hour,” Martinez added. “During the prolonged outage on Dec. 9, we were on generator the entire time. All systems functioned just as they should have. No patients were ever in any danger at any time.”
Calling for an ambulance would have been challenging for some Jemez Co-op customers during the 13-hour power outage Dec 9, however, because many Windstream telephone customers lost phone service.
“Switching equipment for phone calls and computer data are all computers, and computers need power,” Windstream spokesman Larry White explained. “We have backup batteries but they’re only good for six to nine hours. Beyond that, we need diesel generators.”
All Windstream switching stations have batteries, but some — like the Española switching station — do not have permanent generators on site.
“We had to bring in mobile generators (to recover phone service),” White said.
State Police Capt. Daniel Lovato reported a problem with phone lines at the State Police’s Española 911 call center the night of Dec. 14. Logs show that emergency calls had to be rerouted through the State Police’s Taos 911 call station.
White said Windstream received no reports of 911 service disruptions at the State Police offices.
“Only local service was affected for the State Police. Another vendor’s equipment was involved, not Windstream’s,” White said.
Qwest provides local phone service for the State Police 911 call center. After an initial phone conversation in which the SUN asked for an explanation for the disruption in phone service, Qwest officials did not call back with answers.
Windstream provided the State Police 911 call center with a backup generator on Dec. 14, White noted.
“We pay particular attention to emergency services,” White said.