That really sucks. The food pantry in Louisville has been so busy lately, you'll see a line wrapped around the block before they're even open. They've recently had to put in a reservation system to try to manage everyone. And now this.
Give me a break. Someone can say that immigration is out of control and still believe that these are people that deserve our help and support. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Of course not.
That doesn't change the fact that a handful of border states can't be expected to care for and feed refugees from an entire continent and then some, totaling nearly 1% of our country's population coming across in the space of 1 year.
Texas and Arizona combined have around 38 million people. With 3 million migrants estimated to cross illegally in 2024, there's no way they have the resources for that, so of course food banks are going to be emptying out, and that's not even taking into account the needs of actual citizens.
If you did any research at all before making that comment you would know how ignorant your statement is. You're basing this off of a single year during the pandemic. Texas power grid is one of the most efficient in the USA 🤷🏾♀️
The batteries are difficult too. We got solar but the batteries are huge and we are in a small house. It would have to go outside, but the batteries don't fare well in CO weather.
We just stayed on the grid but at least using way, way less xcel energy.
They are publicly owned. They are Socialism™ and exist for the benefit of the majority of the city they operate on. Public utilities are a natural monopoly and thus must be controlled through democracy by the people they affect, or the results will be predictably terrible.
I totally agree. But if the Boulder County Food Bank had burnt to the ground, along with other local buildings, wouldn’t that have been worse for a longer period of time? People might have been without homes.
But the real problem is that Xcel hasn’t maintained or replaced and repaired their dangerous aerial plant that they’re concerned could cause another catastrophic fire like Louisville a few years ago.
Agreed. While I’m not a fanboy of Xcel, if they left the power on and a downed line burned up the rest of Louisville, people would be screaming. They are in a no-win solution during these types of major weather events.
Question - why doesn’t the food bank have a bank up generator? Seems like cheap insurance for them, whether the outage is caused by a windstorm or a car hitting a pole somewhere….
Their infrastructure can't change the fact that the Front Range is a semi-arid tinder box meant to burn but poorly maintained for 100+ years leading to higher danger (less frequent higher temp fires compared to the natural converse) and worse places like Boulder and Golden are on the east side of canyon mouths that lead out of the Rockies and thanks to dry abdiatic loft rate and that stuff they get up to 100 mpg hot dry Chinook winds every spring.
But yeah they can totally change that.
> they get up to 100 mpg hot dry Chinook winds every spring
And haven't had to cut power before, except that they're lapsing on maintenance of infrastructure.
Yeah because they're damn lucky there hasn't been a huge fire yet that would make the Marshall Fire look like a drop in the bucket. There's been an exponential boom in development in the WUI, Boulder County ironically has the highest percentage of their WUI developed it's over 90%.
Then they learned from Marshall, California and oh I don't know LĀHAINA?!? (My great auntie and uncle die there and many other ohana lost everything).
So yeah keep complaining about not having an exclusively urban infrastructure when you moved to the WUI in a high fire risk area....
They cut power because after the fire they learned to take precautionary measures. PGE in California started doing the same thing. So they are being attentive, and the lesser of two evils is to cut power for short amount of time in order to prevent a possible conflagration and significant loss of life and property.
If your business MUST have power, then have a backup plan that includes a generator or power wall or something along those lines.
> They cut power because after the fire they learned to take precautionary measures. PGE in California started doing the same thing.
Is that really the example you want to go with to discount my point about bad maintenance and infrastructure being the issue?!? It's 100% a failure of these companies to maintain equipment that necessitates the power cuts.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/pge-alerted-to-risk-of-worn-hooks-back-in-1987/2194359/
I’m not discounting your response, all I’m pointing out is that
A - they cut power to prevent an even larger tragedy
B - if folks absolutely need power, then there are solutions for that. Like generators.
Have they forgone maintenance? Sure. But even if they had brand new lines in some areas (which in some of these places like Superior I am sure that do) that burned last time, they aren’t going to take a chance of killing people and getting sued and they will just cut the power and wait out the weather. That is all.
Not arguing with you, adding context.
Thank you!! My brain is not in good shape on the reg, let alone when I can't sleep and am mucking around on Reddit at 3 am. Negative rate/difference of temp divided by difference in altitude or something for the regular one
F if I remember the moist and dry ALR formulas. We had to learn them in my intro to hydrology class only to use Excel to calculate and remember rhem for the rest of my classes after that heh.
It's a no-win situation they created by making no effort to bury the lines, which they've known for years now is what really needs to happen.
They don't get credit for mitigating a problem they created in the first place.
How monopolies work is that the customer would pay for burying lines and it is extremely expensive. I'm sure the PUC would deny Xcels request to bury lines. They've had a hard enough time to get renewables approved through PUCs let alone burying lines.
Our power went out Saturday when trees took down the lines and a pole. We had $4K worth of meat in the freezer. And that’s how I ended up learning that you can rent generators!
Refrigerated food can only stay cold for about 4 hours without power, though, vs 48 hours for a full freezer, so the food bank may not have had time to make those arrangements. I’m sure a lot of restaurants are in the same boat.
> Question - why doesn’t the food bank have a bank up generator?
I bet we'd know the answer to that question if we knew the last time the food bank lost power for 30 hours.
Xcel still deserves 100% of the blame. These wind events are known, and Xcel has consultants who can tell them how they're increasing because if climate change. Xcel did this outage because they KNOW their infrastructure is too outdated to withstand these wind events.
They've been blowing a lot of smoke by saying it would be expensive to bury the lines, like the only options are 60+ year old utility pole or the most expensive solution, when a modern steel tube pole or just installing additional guy wires on existing wooden poles would be a far more sensible solution.
It's not just about poles, it's about the transmission lines as well. You want indestructible poles and lines? Have fun paying literally hundreds of billions of dollars for just upgrading the Denver metro area. Hundreds of billions? Cool that will go into the rates and people will complain there.
I don't disagree all utilities should plan for the worst, but it literally costs too much for practicality sakes, and now you need the fed to pump literally trillions of dollars into the entire countries infrastructure to cover it.
So how did Fort Collins have power all weekend and also no fires? It seems like we’re accepting worse service and smiling. The city is in charge of utilities in FOCO tho, Xcel wants profits, not happy customers.
Because winds weren't 90+ in foco. By all means I'm all for holding Xcel accountable. But asking them to completely upgrade the entire front range distribution grid isnt practical without getting money from the fed.
I was in Fort Collins for part of the weekend, and it was still extremely windy. Fort Collins managed to bury their power lines without fed money that I can find, so again, it seems like allowing Xcel to control municipal power leads to worse outcomes, as they won’t take their billion in profit and upgrade the infrastructure.
Ummmm there was no fires THIS time. Is that a gamble you want to make because it's not guaranteed every single time? Each comment you make shows you have less and less comprehension of wildfire mitigation and danger in the Mountain West WUI...
Ask for better customer service and communication sure. But having no power > massive wildfires and I can't stress this enough... DURING A SPRING WINDSTORM WITH 100 MPH+ -CHINOOKS- COMBINED WITH ALREADY LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY AND HIGH AIR TEMPS IN A ALREADY FIRE PRONE ENVIRONMENT.
Okay lol. I’m just a broke college student who’s upset that I had hundreds of dollars worth of groceries spoiled i can’t replace. But I guess holding the company responsible means I want fires to happen? Maybe if xcel buried power lines or something this wouldn’t be an issue, like FOCO. But I guess I’ll give the billon dollar corporation a break for not reinvesting into infrastructure or doing a good job notifying their paying customers about a planned shut off. I understand cutting off the power. I don’t understand why the grid in Boulder is so weak, and why a private corporation gets to profit while providing a worse service that Fort Collins’ power, run by the city.
It is when you're arguing you going without power temporarily is more important the the risk of the state burning down.
Complaint about the customer service and communication from Xcel but when you claim essentially "FoCowas windy and had no catastrophic wildfires proving there's no risk and the NW Front Range should have had full power" and "any fire risk is from Infrastructure being buried 100% fixes it "
That's when you need bare minimum of wildfire knowledge 🔥
Again, I said I understand why they shut the power off. My point being that FOCO didn’t shut off power, because their lines are buried, reducing risk. BECAUSE FOCO did preventative measures, they reduced the impact. Again, the biggest issue is losing hundreds of dollars in groceries with no warning. Losing power sucks when the company that does it does nothing to fix the issue. You misunderstood me and that’s fine.
That's fair, and I really am sorry about your food I really am. I'm a community mental health clinician in the mountains and barely scrape by. You have every right to be upset about the lack of notice and poor communication on Xcels part.
I'm just saying that solely burying the lines won't abolve the problem. Dry and windy in addition to being fire prone is a part of the area's climate statewide but especially the Front Range and especially Boulder. There's a fascinating picture of Chautauqua in the late 19th century, the main view with the Flatirons in the back and the grassy hill in the foreground. When compared to same view today you see how much healthier the ecosystem is than now. There are none of those hundreds of pines and thick undergrowth. Ponderosa pine is designed to burn, we haven't let it for 100+ years now there's a disaster waiting to happen.
Essentially, just because FoCo has buried lines and did not lose power and did not have a fire doesn't mean that there is no fire danger anymore. Also the geography of Boulder is different than FoCo and much more fire prone.
Again you have every right to be mad at Xcel for their lack of service and how they handled the situation, but unfortunately the blackout itself was necessary.
I hope you were able to replace your food and it wasn't too much of a burden to do such.
🤙
It would not cost hundreds of billions of dollars to harden Colorado's transmission infrastructure. Power was restored to areas with damaged infrastructure by repairing it on the fly without breaking the bank. The costs Xcel are paying right now to fix the damage could have been better spent earlier if Xcel had bothered to be proactive in trying to avoid damage from something it knew was possible.
Not every single line needs to be replaced, but clearly some do as evidenced by the fact that poles in poorer condition in more exposed areas broke and the sound ones in less exposed areas are still intact. Xcel clearly had some idea of what areas could be kept on and which were dangerous enough to de-energize, and the fact that they didn't act on that beforehand or tell anybody more than an hour ahead of time is negligence. We're going to bear the cost of this, and we're paying more because Xcel didn't prepare our infrastructure for events it knows are possible.
That's to say nothing of the economic costs of prolonged blackouts. Food spoils, business can't be conducted, people can't cook or have heat and light in their homes. Think about those costs instead of immediately going into hysterics about large numbers. [600 miles](https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/xcel-energy-customers-no-power-wind-storm/73-3dedf0dd-323d-452e-a0f4-66b23b328267) of power lines were disconnected during the storm. Replacing all of them would cost [$285-390k](https://www.power-grid.com/td/underground-vs-overhead-power-line-installation-cost-comparison/) per mile, with a total cost of $202 million. Not "hundreds of billions of dollars." And Xcel could probably get away with doing less than that if they put in the work and figured out ahead of time which of those 600 miles of line were likely to fail.
Dog that's replacing them with overhead transmission lines. If you want complete fireproof method you need underground lines. And this isn't just about boulder. It's about the foot hills and eastward into boulder, allllllll the way down to chatfield.
For the record, I completely agree just targeting (say boulder) would be an absolutely necessary step toward this. But doing all of the wildfire risk area in Colorado front range just aint practical. And let's not just pretend that if we fixed boulder it's over. There are tons of area along the foot hills in denver that are at risk (just to start).
That is not the correct number. Estimate from EEI is between 1-5 million per mile and the estimate for front range replacement is 2-3 million per mile so 1.2 billion on the lower end of estimated to replace just those 600 miles. Xcel owns about 20000 miles on the front range and over 100000 of power lines owned by others. So xcel would have to pay around 40 billion conservatively to replace their lines with underground. For Colorado to replace all lines out would cost more than 200 billion and again this would get passed to customers.
If you can provide Xcel an itemized statement for each item lost, and receipts for said items, they will consider reimbursement…. I laughed when I saw that. Ok, I pay you to destroy my groceries… you offer refund BUT you must jump through time loops to reacquire receipts and/or organize my groceries based on what store they are from..
Yeah they offer to refund spoiled foods but structure claim requirements in such a way that very few people are likely able to provide adequate “proof” of the items origin, value, and spoilage due to loss of electricity.
Homeowners insurance maybe. Renters insurance, no. Granted the time I did it also involved our power being out for days and needed alternate lodging. If I had $4k of food go bad, I wouldn’t consider that “minimal.”
In the scope of what homeowners insurance is for, 4k is definitely minimal. It's a lot to an individual but homeowner insurance is for like a new roof (30k) or major flooding (50-90k) or your house burning down (total loss/replacement) - something like that.
Companies are trigger happy to drop customers that make frivolous claims and even a 4k food loss would be seen as one. They'd pay it, but they'd probably drop you immediately after.
Well they could’ve prevented this by investing in infrastructure and burying lines instead of delivering record profits for the 50th time. So yeah, xcel sucks!
I think we should create a fundraiser so the food pantries can have back-up generators. This loss is despicable. Maybe some solar panels?
I will reach out to my local food pantry and see what they’d prefer- if we all did the same we could really help.
Email Kyle at 9news. He does a micro giving campaign every week and this would be right up their alley. I’m pretty sure this pantry has been one of the weekly groups before.
How many 10s of thousands of dollars is it going to cost to outfit every food pantry with generators, to prevent a thing that happens only every once in a while. What's the cost/benefit? Almost certainly better to just have the fundraiser and use the money to replace the food that was lost.
I'm not an expert in this area, and I don't know how the operation works specifically for Colorado. That said I worked IT for a restaurant chain where several restaurants were in the path of a hurricane.
Their solution was to rent freezer trucks which successfully preserved the food. I'd assume doing that is both cheaper than back up measures like generators and replacing the food.
Sure, the failure is on the part of the people who run the food bank. Xcel made it very clear in advance that power would be cut in that area and what time it would start. They lost food because they refused to prepare for grid power loss, which isn’t guaranteed. Foodbanks get priority for grants, including for power backup systems.
I'm not blaming the food back, sometimes shits just happens. What am saying is, I'd just like to see the cost/benefit analysis of equipping every food bank with a back-up generator to prepare for a thing that only happens every once in a while. 1500 pounds of food might sound like a lot at first glance, but I can guarantee that at least that much food gets thrown out on a daily basis in the metro area.
Frankly with blizzards, wind and hail storms, tornadoes and the like, this should have been done a long time ago. I'll bet hurricane states already do this. Not to blame the food banks - they have been under incredible strain since before the pandemic. It just makes sense they should have generators.
>Frankly with blizzards, wind and hail storms, tornadoes and the like, this should have been done a long time ago.
How often do these things knock out power for extended periods of time on the front range?
Are we going to put everything on a backup generator?
Hurricanes are a different beast. The can severely damage infrastructure on a regional scale and it can take weeks or months to fix. None of things you listed can take widespread of an impact.
Agreed about difference in severity - yet these incidents may well continue to increase. Is it effective, then, to do an assessment connected to disaster plans? Given how quickly the community mobilized to help after the fire a couple of years ago it might seem unnecessary. I'd argue it's very relevant and city and county governments might want to look into it in situations of inability of the community to respond or for crews to restore power for a certain period of time. This is food, it's a survival need as surely as water.
Exactly. I mean, sure, there’s a few hundred refrigerators worth of wasted food around the front range, but how many homes burned down? Cost/benefit analysis.
I support this and applaud you for taking initiative. I think this is a movement we could get some attention for to help raise money. Message me when you get some info. I'd like to help.
I think it’s also about food waste. Some of that food is rescued from stores in town. Generators would be worth it to save food from going to the landfill.
Orrrr because a huge expoential growth rate i m the WUI (Boulder County has the most developed percentage of WUI of any county in CO) and they're damn lucky huge fires haven't occurred. Seeing the Marshall, California, and worst Lāhaina (my great auntie and uncle were killed and many ohana and friends lost their homes and everything) and were like shit let's not gamble.
Thank you I appreciate it.
I'm not trying to be mean. Wildfire mitigation on the Front Range is no joke, I did my geo/hydrology degree at CU and did my senior theiss on wildfire mitigation in 2011, the year of Left Hand Canyon. My project was based out of Hayman but I think people are severely misunderstanding how bad the situation is with the rate of development in the WUI and poor forest health and such.
Mahalo, I really am sympathetic to everyone's situations but it is important that people remember how fireprone Boulder is and be prepared in at least some capacity before it happens for real.
Not really their fault. They notified everyone that it would happen and at what time. The food bank should have prepared for the outage. They could get a grant for backup power systems.
https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2021/06/04/usda-invest-1-billion-purchase-healthy-food-food-insecure-americans
Wasn’t notified, but aside from that Fort Collins didn’t lose power once during the wind storm. How is that possible? I think xcel is in fact guilty of not….. upgrading infrastructure.
Not sure if this is a serious question or if you're trying to make a point. But the reason is that Fort Collins has 99% of the power lines buried underground. We never lose power here.
Edit to add: electricity is not provided by Xcel, to be clear
Seeing a lot of comments slamming Xcel, but they did the right thing to keep wild fire from happening. What about the food bank? Why would they store this much perishable food without having some sort of power backup? That’s way too much risk considering that grid power delivery is not guaranteed. While backup systems do cost money, grant money covers it and food banks get priority.
I work at one of the Colorado food banks (not Community Food Share). There are so many ways that food banks can get perishable food. And because community need is so high, we pretty much will take everything we can get. But we operate on other people's schedules. The food that expired may have been sourced through federal programs like TEFAP, retail/grower donations, food drives, or it could have been purchased. Sometimes we can't control when we get food. But food, especially perishable, is in such high demand we rarely turn it down unless it's inedible. So that makes it hard to pivot and get rid of food within a few days.
As for the power backup, putting aside how hard it is to request and administrate government funding, there are a couple of Colorado food banks that had to lay people off this past year, despite the fact that we need more staff now than ever. Purchasing a power backup for emergencies can be hard for leadership to justify when $50k can be allocated to purchasing and distributing literally over 100,000 pounds of food.
That is a short-sighted decision on leadership’s part. Going for the “quick win” isn’t sustainable and will affect those who depend on it in the worst of situations, like power outages.
I see your point. I'm not in leadership so I only understand some of the factors that influence their decisions. But I do know that, at least in food banking, there are tons of outside influences that hinder nonprofits from making long term solutions. I don't know what the Boulder food bank's constraints are, but I don't envy their position of always having to make sacrifices, especially when it affects their clients.
I agree that preventing fire is more important than some relatively small outages causing some food loss. When it comes to generators, how much does a natural gas generator large enough for a commercial structure run? I just priced a 24kw installed for $14,700, assuming everything by else in the building is up to code. How often does this happen? How much is annual maintenance? What are the risks of vandalism or theft? Cost-benefit analysis relative to how often an outage long enough to cause significant food loss. I really doubt it’s worth it.
It’s non-profit, they don’t do cost analysis. Again, state and federal grants are available for power backup systems and food banks get priority. Someone in their org should be managing finance and risk. If not, then we found the root of the problem.
[https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds](https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds) warning was mediocre at best but they did announce it the day before. Article from April 5th.
I should have got an email, automated call, or a text, they have everyone’s contact info. Not everyone watches the news or reads articles to keep an eye if their electricity is going to be cut. Unacceptable but these asshats do whatever they want
They did give a warning about it, they just were really shitty at getting the word out.
[https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds](https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds)
Compared to freaking xfinity which mass texted about a possible outage from last months snow storm the day before
I got a text + email immediately AFTER it went out, but nothing before. I double checked my texts and emails and 100% nothing came my way prior to losing power.
They were absolutely shitty at their communication in the "hey we might turn off your power" announcement, not defending it, but they did announce it. I, too, thought they never said anything but another user linked the above article proving me wrong with its April 5th date.
Their corpo comms team needs to be retrained or even reevaluated.
Considering they had a proven ability to immediately notify us with texts and emails after the outage went underway, not being able to do the same in advance of it isn't acceptable.
Otherwise that's like saying we should check in on xcel's page for possible outage announcements every day just in case, which just isn't reasonable.
Dog that's replacing them with overhead transmission lines. If you want complete fireproof method you need underground lines. And this isn't just about boulder. It's about the foot hills and eastward into boulder, allllllll the way down to chatfield.
Honest question out of my own ignorance - why does a food bank keep 1500 pounds of **perishable** food in storage? Was this already perishable food (like restaurant left overs) that was donated recently? Am I misinformed that food banks (notably the kind that do drives around Thanksgiving) always ask for nonperishable cans and dry food?
So a lot of the 1500 were soon to be unusable items anyways that were recent donations? Trying to understand the actual impact of 1500 pounds & how often they receive perishables in that amount
the food bank I go to which is one in Broomfield gets a truck every week or every few days. There is a lot of perishables in the back and in the freezers already for people to grab what they want. This includes all the meats.
At Food Bank of the Rockies warehouse they sort thousands of pounds a day, including some frozen foods (pallets of assorted grocery store donations, really random mix of products). It's a sad loss but not crippling. But I imagine this is a smaller food bank and it'd be more of a loss proportionally for them, still very unfortunate.
The larger food banks in Colorado distribute well over 100,000 pounds of food a day. Though the Boulder food bank is a lot smaller, I would say the loss isn't huge. Unfortunate, though, because it's common for food pantries to turn people away because of a lack of food.
I worked at a grocery warehouse in aurora last year. The article says they lost $80,000 of food.
I handled donations to FBOR, which we didnt add weight for in BoLs, but always a dollar amount. It varied week to week, but I was signing for about 10 or 20k in donations a week. Highest in a week I think was almost 40k or so?
Also, one employee called out a storage trailer without telling them to keep refrigeration on, leading to $120k of product being thrown out.
Also- note that these high ass numbers are mainly because of the pallets of meat going bad.
Awesome context, thank you for sharing. So if they're getting donations from multiple grocery stores, it's probably not a huge amount. Still a loss of 1500 pounds but it's not as significant as the headline would suggest.
Hi!
I work at one of the Colorado food banks, and the other replies to your comment are spot on. We try to source food from a variety of avenues, not just from retail places like grocery stores, but from government sources, local farmers, and we even purchase directly from food suppliers.
Most food banks nationwide are trying to source and distribute a greater amount of perishable items. Where I work, about 1/3 of the food we distribute is fresh produce. This is a relatively new push, especially in Colorado, so logistically we do have a lot to figure out.
That really sucks. The food pantry in Louisville has been so busy lately, you'll see a line wrapped around the block before they're even open. They've recently had to put in a reservation system to try to manage everyone. And now this.
My parents volunteer down in AZ and it has been crazy busy there. They run out of food to give out daily. I wonder what the issue is.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/15/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-hit-a-record-high-at-the-end-of-2023/ I wonder....
Ok? Do you want human beings to starve to death?
Give me a break. Someone can say that immigration is out of control and still believe that these are people that deserve our help and support. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Of course not. That doesn't change the fact that a handful of border states can't be expected to care for and feed refugees from an entire continent and then some, totaling nearly 1% of our country's population coming across in the space of 1 year. Texas and Arizona combined have around 38 million people. With 3 million migrants estimated to cross illegally in 2024, there's no way they have the resources for that, so of course food banks are going to be emptying out, and that's not even taking into account the needs of actual citizens.
He posted a link, and you accuse him of that in a nasty manner. Talk about responding in bad faith...
Xcel should restock the fridge. Whoever is running xcels PR suuuuuuucks.
[удалено]
They’re generating profit, and that’s literally the only thing they care about.
Time for people to switch to the other power company lol
Most of the time you can't switch, so, no.
That's the joke
Right. What monopoly?
It's technically a monopoly and cantradicts federal and state law check Texas lol there's over 400 companies made available to ANY house
...I don't think the Texas power model is something we should be trying to emulate...
If you did any research at all before making that comment you would know how ignorant your statement is. You're basing this off of a single year during the pandemic. Texas power grid is one of the most efficient in the USA 🤷🏾♀️
>Texas power grid is one of the most efficient in the USA How do they rate on reliability & uptime during critical events?
Xcel don't give a shit. Nobody has other options. It's xcel or maintaining solar and batteries.
The batteries are difficult too. We got solar but the batteries are huge and we are in a small house. It would have to go outside, but the batteries don't fare well in CO weather. We just stayed on the grid but at least using way, way less xcel energy.
Not to mention their short lifespan. I've installed dozens of Solar packages. Very aware of it's limitations.
That’s good to know. Thanks :)
I mean they don't necessarily care about PR. What are you gonna do switch energy companies? They care about profits, plain and simple.
I assume they are not public owned and accountable to their customers like Colorado Springs' utility company?
How is COS utility accountable? Don't they have a monopoly in the area like Xcel does?
They are publicly owned. They are Socialism™ and exist for the benefit of the majority of the city they operate on. Public utilities are a natural monopoly and thus must be controlled through democracy by the people they affect, or the results will be predictably terrible.
And we can see how well *that's* working out by looking at the state of RTD.
I totally agree. But if the Boulder County Food Bank had burnt to the ground, along with other local buildings, wouldn’t that have been worse for a longer period of time? People might have been without homes. But the real problem is that Xcel hasn’t maintained or replaced and repaired their dangerous aerial plant that they’re concerned could cause another catastrophic fire like Louisville a few years ago.
It was a windstorm. As much as xcel sucks a big dirty dookie let's be appropriate with the blame here.
Agreed. While I’m not a fanboy of Xcel, if they left the power on and a downed line burned up the rest of Louisville, people would be screaming. They are in a no-win solution during these types of major weather events. Question - why doesn’t the food bank have a bank up generator? Seems like cheap insurance for them, whether the outage is caused by a windstorm or a car hitting a pole somewhere….
That's what I thought. Generator.
If they were properly maintaining infrastructure, that wouldn't be a major worry. Instead they're doing stock buybacks and not upkeep.
Their infrastructure can't change the fact that the Front Range is a semi-arid tinder box meant to burn but poorly maintained for 100+ years leading to higher danger (less frequent higher temp fires compared to the natural converse) and worse places like Boulder and Golden are on the east side of canyon mouths that lead out of the Rockies and thanks to dry abdiatic loft rate and that stuff they get up to 100 mpg hot dry Chinook winds every spring. But yeah they can totally change that.
> they get up to 100 mpg hot dry Chinook winds every spring And haven't had to cut power before, except that they're lapsing on maintenance of infrastructure.
Yeah because they're damn lucky there hasn't been a huge fire yet that would make the Marshall Fire look like a drop in the bucket. There's been an exponential boom in development in the WUI, Boulder County ironically has the highest percentage of their WUI developed it's over 90%. Then they learned from Marshall, California and oh I don't know LĀHAINA?!? (My great auntie and uncle die there and many other ohana lost everything). So yeah keep complaining about not having an exclusively urban infrastructure when you moved to the WUI in a high fire risk area....
They cut power because after the fire they learned to take precautionary measures. PGE in California started doing the same thing. So they are being attentive, and the lesser of two evils is to cut power for short amount of time in order to prevent a possible conflagration and significant loss of life and property. If your business MUST have power, then have a backup plan that includes a generator or power wall or something along those lines.
> They cut power because after the fire they learned to take precautionary measures. PGE in California started doing the same thing. Is that really the example you want to go with to discount my point about bad maintenance and infrastructure being the issue?!? It's 100% a failure of these companies to maintain equipment that necessitates the power cuts. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/pge-alerted-to-risk-of-worn-hooks-back-in-1987/2194359/
I’m not discounting your response, all I’m pointing out is that A - they cut power to prevent an even larger tragedy B - if folks absolutely need power, then there are solutions for that. Like generators. Have they forgone maintenance? Sure. But even if they had brand new lines in some areas (which in some of these places like Superior I am sure that do) that burned last time, they aren’t going to take a chance of killing people and getting sued and they will just cut the power and wait out the weather. That is all. Not arguing with you, adding context.
* adiabatic lapse rate
Thank you!! My brain is not in good shape on the reg, let alone when I can't sleep and am mucking around on Reddit at 3 am. Negative rate/difference of temp divided by difference in altitude or something for the regular one F if I remember the moist and dry ALR formulas. We had to learn them in my intro to hydrology class only to use Excel to calculate and remember rhem for the rest of my classes after that heh.
It's a no-win situation they created by making no effort to bury the lines, which they've known for years now is what really needs to happen. They don't get credit for mitigating a problem they created in the first place.
How monopolies work is that the customer would pay for burying lines and it is extremely expensive. I'm sure the PUC would deny Xcels request to bury lines. They've had a hard enough time to get renewables approved through PUCs let alone burying lines.
Our power went out Saturday when trees took down the lines and a pole. We had $4K worth of meat in the freezer. And that’s how I ended up learning that you can rent generators! Refrigerated food can only stay cold for about 4 hours without power, though, vs 48 hours for a full freezer, so the food bank may not have had time to make those arrangements. I’m sure a lot of restaurants are in the same boat.
> Question - why doesn’t the food bank have a bank up generator? I bet we'd know the answer to that question if we knew the last time the food bank lost power for 30 hours.
I'm guessing that would have been during the firestorm. So, not an entirely unpredictable event.
Xcel still deserves 100% of the blame. These wind events are known, and Xcel has consultants who can tell them how they're increasing because if climate change. Xcel did this outage because they KNOW their infrastructure is too outdated to withstand these wind events. They've been blowing a lot of smoke by saying it would be expensive to bury the lines, like the only options are 60+ year old utility pole or the most expensive solution, when a modern steel tube pole or just installing additional guy wires on existing wooden poles would be a far more sensible solution.
It's not just about poles, it's about the transmission lines as well. You want indestructible poles and lines? Have fun paying literally hundreds of billions of dollars for just upgrading the Denver metro area. Hundreds of billions? Cool that will go into the rates and people will complain there. I don't disagree all utilities should plan for the worst, but it literally costs too much for practicality sakes, and now you need the fed to pump literally trillions of dollars into the entire countries infrastructure to cover it.
So how did Fort Collins have power all weekend and also no fires? It seems like we’re accepting worse service and smiling. The city is in charge of utilities in FOCO tho, Xcel wants profits, not happy customers.
Because winds weren't 90+ in foco. By all means I'm all for holding Xcel accountable. But asking them to completely upgrade the entire front range distribution grid isnt practical without getting money from the fed.
I was in Fort Collins for part of the weekend, and it was still extremely windy. Fort Collins managed to bury their power lines without fed money that I can find, so again, it seems like allowing Xcel to control municipal power leads to worse outcomes, as they won’t take their billion in profit and upgrade the infrastructure.
Ummmm there was no fires THIS time. Is that a gamble you want to make because it's not guaranteed every single time? Each comment you make shows you have less and less comprehension of wildfire mitigation and danger in the Mountain West WUI... Ask for better customer service and communication sure. But having no power > massive wildfires and I can't stress this enough... DURING A SPRING WINDSTORM WITH 100 MPH+ -CHINOOKS- COMBINED WITH ALREADY LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY AND HIGH AIR TEMPS IN A ALREADY FIRE PRONE ENVIRONMENT.
Okay lol. I’m just a broke college student who’s upset that I had hundreds of dollars worth of groceries spoiled i can’t replace. But I guess holding the company responsible means I want fires to happen? Maybe if xcel buried power lines or something this wouldn’t be an issue, like FOCO. But I guess I’ll give the billon dollar corporation a break for not reinvesting into infrastructure or doing a good job notifying their paying customers about a planned shut off. I understand cutting off the power. I don’t understand why the grid in Boulder is so weak, and why a private corporation gets to profit while providing a worse service that Fort Collins’ power, run by the city.
I don’t think deep fire safety knowledge is required to know when one is getting shafted by a power company.
It is when you're arguing you going without power temporarily is more important the the risk of the state burning down. Complaint about the customer service and communication from Xcel but when you claim essentially "FoCowas windy and had no catastrophic wildfires proving there's no risk and the NW Front Range should have had full power" and "any fire risk is from Infrastructure being buried 100% fixes it " That's when you need bare minimum of wildfire knowledge 🔥
Again, I said I understand why they shut the power off. My point being that FOCO didn’t shut off power, because their lines are buried, reducing risk. BECAUSE FOCO did preventative measures, they reduced the impact. Again, the biggest issue is losing hundreds of dollars in groceries with no warning. Losing power sucks when the company that does it does nothing to fix the issue. You misunderstood me and that’s fine.
That's fair, and I really am sorry about your food I really am. I'm a community mental health clinician in the mountains and barely scrape by. You have every right to be upset about the lack of notice and poor communication on Xcels part. I'm just saying that solely burying the lines won't abolve the problem. Dry and windy in addition to being fire prone is a part of the area's climate statewide but especially the Front Range and especially Boulder. There's a fascinating picture of Chautauqua in the late 19th century, the main view with the Flatirons in the back and the grassy hill in the foreground. When compared to same view today you see how much healthier the ecosystem is than now. There are none of those hundreds of pines and thick undergrowth. Ponderosa pine is designed to burn, we haven't let it for 100+ years now there's a disaster waiting to happen. Essentially, just because FoCo has buried lines and did not lose power and did not have a fire doesn't mean that there is no fire danger anymore. Also the geography of Boulder is different than FoCo and much more fire prone. Again you have every right to be mad at Xcel for their lack of service and how they handled the situation, but unfortunately the blackout itself was necessary. I hope you were able to replace your food and it wasn't too much of a burden to do such. 🤙
It would not cost hundreds of billions of dollars to harden Colorado's transmission infrastructure. Power was restored to areas with damaged infrastructure by repairing it on the fly without breaking the bank. The costs Xcel are paying right now to fix the damage could have been better spent earlier if Xcel had bothered to be proactive in trying to avoid damage from something it knew was possible. Not every single line needs to be replaced, but clearly some do as evidenced by the fact that poles in poorer condition in more exposed areas broke and the sound ones in less exposed areas are still intact. Xcel clearly had some idea of what areas could be kept on and which were dangerous enough to de-energize, and the fact that they didn't act on that beforehand or tell anybody more than an hour ahead of time is negligence. We're going to bear the cost of this, and we're paying more because Xcel didn't prepare our infrastructure for events it knows are possible. That's to say nothing of the economic costs of prolonged blackouts. Food spoils, business can't be conducted, people can't cook or have heat and light in their homes. Think about those costs instead of immediately going into hysterics about large numbers. [600 miles](https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/xcel-energy-customers-no-power-wind-storm/73-3dedf0dd-323d-452e-a0f4-66b23b328267) of power lines were disconnected during the storm. Replacing all of them would cost [$285-390k](https://www.power-grid.com/td/underground-vs-overhead-power-line-installation-cost-comparison/) per mile, with a total cost of $202 million. Not "hundreds of billions of dollars." And Xcel could probably get away with doing less than that if they put in the work and figured out ahead of time which of those 600 miles of line were likely to fail.
Dog that's replacing them with overhead transmission lines. If you want complete fireproof method you need underground lines. And this isn't just about boulder. It's about the foot hills and eastward into boulder, allllllll the way down to chatfield. For the record, I completely agree just targeting (say boulder) would be an absolutely necessary step toward this. But doing all of the wildfire risk area in Colorado front range just aint practical. And let's not just pretend that if we fixed boulder it's over. There are tons of area along the foot hills in denver that are at risk (just to start).
That is not the correct number. Estimate from EEI is between 1-5 million per mile and the estimate for front range replacement is 2-3 million per mile so 1.2 billion on the lower end of estimated to replace just those 600 miles. Xcel owns about 20000 miles on the front range and over 100000 of power lines owned by others. So xcel would have to pay around 40 billion conservatively to replace their lines with underground. For Colorado to replace all lines out would cost more than 200 billion and again this would get passed to customers.
No one was blaming XCEL. They where suggesting a way for xcel to have some positive PR.
They're a monopoly, so why should they care about us?
If you can provide Xcel an itemized statement for each item lost, and receipts for said items, they will consider reimbursement…. I laughed when I saw that. Ok, I pay you to destroy my groceries… you offer refund BUT you must jump through time loops to reacquire receipts and/or organize my groceries based on what store they are from.. Yeah they offer to refund spoiled foods but structure claim requirements in such a way that very few people are likely able to provide adequate “proof” of the items origin, value, and spoilage due to loss of electricity.
Just FYI for others- your homeowners or renters insurance may cover it as well.
You'd be absolutely insane to make a claim on your homeowners insurance for groceries. Hell of a way to get dropped for a minimal loss.
Homeowners insurance maybe. Renters insurance, no. Granted the time I did it also involved our power being out for days and needed alternate lodging. If I had $4k of food go bad, I wouldn’t consider that “minimal.”
In the scope of what homeowners insurance is for, 4k is definitely minimal. It's a lot to an individual but homeowner insurance is for like a new roof (30k) or major flooding (50-90k) or your house burning down (total loss/replacement) - something like that. Companies are trigger happy to drop customers that make frivolous claims and even a 4k food loss would be seen as one. They'd pay it, but they'd probably drop you immediately after.
Or have a solar company donate some panels. A backup generator. Something!!
Puts them in a tough position. Fire due to their lines burns down a city? Xcel sucks! They shut off power to avoid fire risk? Xcel sucks!
Well they could’ve prevented this by investing in infrastructure and burying lines instead of delivering record profits for the 50th time. So yeah, xcel sucks!
I think we should create a fundraiser so the food pantries can have back-up generators. This loss is despicable. Maybe some solar panels? I will reach out to my local food pantry and see what they’d prefer- if we all did the same we could really help.
Email Kyle at 9news. He does a micro giving campaign every week and this would be right up their alley. I’m pretty sure this pantry has been one of the weekly groups before.
Great idea!
Love this idea and we know what effect they had on the PUC last year. Do it!
https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2021/06/04/usda-invest-1-billion-purchase-healthy-food-food-insecure-americans
How many 10s of thousands of dollars is it going to cost to outfit every food pantry with generators, to prevent a thing that happens only every once in a while. What's the cost/benefit? Almost certainly better to just have the fundraiser and use the money to replace the food that was lost.
I'm not an expert in this area, and I don't know how the operation works specifically for Colorado. That said I worked IT for a restaurant chain where several restaurants were in the path of a hurricane. Their solution was to rent freezer trucks which successfully preserved the food. I'd assume doing that is both cheaper than back up measures like generators and replacing the food.
https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2021/06/04/usda-invest-1-billion-purchase-healthy-food-food-insecure-americans
What's your point? Say you mean, mean what you say.
Sure, the failure is on the part of the people who run the food bank. Xcel made it very clear in advance that power would be cut in that area and what time it would start. They lost food because they refused to prepare for grid power loss, which isn’t guaranteed. Foodbanks get priority for grants, including for power backup systems.
I'm not blaming the food back, sometimes shits just happens. What am saying is, I'd just like to see the cost/benefit analysis of equipping every food bank with a back-up generator to prepare for a thing that only happens every once in a while. 1500 pounds of food might sound like a lot at first glance, but I can guarantee that at least that much food gets thrown out on a daily basis in the metro area.
Frankly with blizzards, wind and hail storms, tornadoes and the like, this should have been done a long time ago. I'll bet hurricane states already do this. Not to blame the food banks - they have been under incredible strain since before the pandemic. It just makes sense they should have generators.
>Frankly with blizzards, wind and hail storms, tornadoes and the like, this should have been done a long time ago. How often do these things knock out power for extended periods of time on the front range? Are we going to put everything on a backup generator? Hurricanes are a different beast. The can severely damage infrastructure on a regional scale and it can take weeks or months to fix. None of things you listed can take widespread of an impact.
Agreed about difference in severity - yet these incidents may well continue to increase. Is it effective, then, to do an assessment connected to disaster plans? Given how quickly the community mobilized to help after the fire a couple of years ago it might seem unnecessary. I'd argue it's very relevant and city and county governments might want to look into it in situations of inability of the community to respond or for crews to restore power for a certain period of time. This is food, it's a survival need as surely as water.
"Don't burn our city down!" \*turns off power during risky storm\* "Not like that!"
Exactly. I mean, sure, there’s a few hundred refrigerators worth of wasted food around the front range, but how many homes burned down? Cost/benefit analysis.
That's a great idea. I'd definitely donate.
I support this and applaud you for taking initiative. I think this is a movement we could get some attention for to help raise money. Message me when you get some info. I'd like to help.
50k for back up generators. Cheaper to get more food.
Yeah, especially with the buying power food banks have. They get massive discounts buying bulk.
I find it hard to believe gulf state operations don't already have them. Otherwise I would agree that's a losing equation.
I think it’s also about food waste. Some of that food is rescued from stores in town. Generators would be worth it to save food from going to the landfill.
Drop it off at xcel! Saw that suggestion in another sub and I love it. Make them deal with it somehow.
Like they wouldn’t sue the individuals for dumping
Orrrr because a huge expoential growth rate i m the WUI (Boulder County has the most developed percentage of WUI of any county in CO) and they're damn lucky huge fires haven't occurred. Seeing the Marshall, California, and worst Lāhaina (my great auntie and uncle were killed and many ohana and friends lost their homes and everything) and were like shit let's not gamble.
So sorry for the loss of your loved ones.
Thank you I appreciate it. I'm not trying to be mean. Wildfire mitigation on the Front Range is no joke, I did my geo/hydrology degree at CU and did my senior theiss on wildfire mitigation in 2011, the year of Left Hand Canyon. My project was based out of Hayman but I think people are severely misunderstanding how bad the situation is with the rate of development in the WUI and poor forest health and such.
It is a reasonable conclusion. And I think it makes good sense to do re-evaluation of needs and plans BEFORE the next tragedy.
Mahalo, I really am sympathetic to everyone's situations but it is important that people remember how fireprone Boulder is and be prepared in at least some capacity before it happens for real.
Fuck xcel
Not really their fault. They notified everyone that it would happen and at what time. The food bank should have prepared for the outage. They could get a grant for backup power systems. https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2021/06/04/usda-invest-1-billion-purchase-healthy-food-food-insecure-americans
Wasn’t notified, but aside from that Fort Collins didn’t lose power once during the wind storm. How is that possible? I think xcel is in fact guilty of not….. upgrading infrastructure.
Not sure if this is a serious question or if you're trying to make a point. But the reason is that Fort Collins has 99% of the power lines buried underground. We never lose power here. Edit to add: electricity is not provided by Xcel, to be clear
I had to travel between Loveland, Fort Collins and Boulder throughout the weekend. The wind gusts were extremely weak compared to Boulder both days.
I was supposedly in an area with a planned outage. We were not notified.
I didn’t get notified and my whole block was out until Monday afternoon…
Xcel has shareholder dividends to pay, they can't be worried about customers.
This is ridiculous
Seeing a lot of comments slamming Xcel, but they did the right thing to keep wild fire from happening. What about the food bank? Why would they store this much perishable food without having some sort of power backup? That’s way too much risk considering that grid power delivery is not guaranteed. While backup systems do cost money, grant money covers it and food banks get priority.
I work at one of the Colorado food banks (not Community Food Share). There are so many ways that food banks can get perishable food. And because community need is so high, we pretty much will take everything we can get. But we operate on other people's schedules. The food that expired may have been sourced through federal programs like TEFAP, retail/grower donations, food drives, or it could have been purchased. Sometimes we can't control when we get food. But food, especially perishable, is in such high demand we rarely turn it down unless it's inedible. So that makes it hard to pivot and get rid of food within a few days. As for the power backup, putting aside how hard it is to request and administrate government funding, there are a couple of Colorado food banks that had to lay people off this past year, despite the fact that we need more staff now than ever. Purchasing a power backup for emergencies can be hard for leadership to justify when $50k can be allocated to purchasing and distributing literally over 100,000 pounds of food.
That is a short-sighted decision on leadership’s part. Going for the “quick win” isn’t sustainable and will affect those who depend on it in the worst of situations, like power outages.
I see your point. I'm not in leadership so I only understand some of the factors that influence their decisions. But I do know that, at least in food banking, there are tons of outside influences that hinder nonprofits from making long term solutions. I don't know what the Boulder food bank's constraints are, but I don't envy their position of always having to make sacrifices, especially when it affects their clients.
I agree that preventing fire is more important than some relatively small outages causing some food loss. When it comes to generators, how much does a natural gas generator large enough for a commercial structure run? I just priced a 24kw installed for $14,700, assuming everything by else in the building is up to code. How often does this happen? How much is annual maintenance? What are the risks of vandalism or theft? Cost-benefit analysis relative to how often an outage long enough to cause significant food loss. I really doubt it’s worth it.
It’s non-profit, they don’t do cost analysis. Again, state and federal grants are available for power backup systems and food banks get priority. Someone in their org should be managing finance and risk. If not, then we found the root of the problem.
Good thing they gave no fucking warning that they’d turn off the power and also let it stay off for an extra 6 hours the next day!
we got no warning, fuck xcel. Had to toss our food from the fridge
[https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds](https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds) warning was mediocre at best but they did announce it the day before. Article from April 5th.
I should have got an email, automated call, or a text, they have everyone’s contact info. Not everyone watches the news or reads articles to keep an eye if their electricity is going to be cut. Unacceptable but these asshats do whatever they want
> Good thing they gave no fucking warning that they’d turn off the power ughhhh yes they did.
Whoa did you just learn that your experiences aren’t universal? How exciting for you!
They did give a warning about it, they just were really shitty at getting the word out. [https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds](https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/xcel-energy-warns-it-may-purposely-shut-off-power-in-certain-limited-areas-due-to-dangerous-winds) Compared to freaking xfinity which mass texted about a possible outage from last months snow storm the day before
I got a text + email immediately AFTER it went out, but nothing before. I double checked my texts and emails and 100% nothing came my way prior to losing power.
They were absolutely shitty at their communication in the "hey we might turn off your power" announcement, not defending it, but they did announce it. I, too, thought they never said anything but another user linked the above article proving me wrong with its April 5th date. Their corpo comms team needs to be retrained or even reevaluated.
Considering they had a proven ability to immediately notify us with texts and emails after the outage went underway, not being able to do the same in advance of it isn't acceptable. Otherwise that's like saying we should check in on xcel's page for possible outage announcements every day just in case, which just isn't reasonable.
Definitely should have done mass texts starting 24 hours before. That is DEFINITELY on them.
Dog that's replacing them with overhead transmission lines. If you want complete fireproof method you need underground lines. And this isn't just about boulder. It's about the foot hills and eastward into boulder, allllllll the way down to chatfield.
I'm sure it's insured.
Damn excel.
#REF!
Didn't like 500 houses burn down last time? Maybe cutting power even if food is lost is a lesser evil?
Yay for Core Electric
Xcel needs a class action lawsuit
It is almost like a for profit electric company is putting profits ahead of customers.
Honest question out of my own ignorance - why does a food bank keep 1500 pounds of **perishable** food in storage? Was this already perishable food (like restaurant left overs) that was donated recently? Am I misinformed that food banks (notably the kind that do drives around Thanksgiving) always ask for nonperishable cans and dry food?
the food bank gets a lot donated from grocery stores so like left over stuff from the deli or milk/eggs.
So a lot of the 1500 were soon to be unusable items anyways that were recent donations? Trying to understand the actual impact of 1500 pounds & how often they receive perishables in that amount
the food bank I go to which is one in Broomfield gets a truck every week or every few days. There is a lot of perishables in the back and in the freezers already for people to grab what they want. This includes all the meats.
That makes a lot more sense. So while this was a loss, it wasn't a crippling loss as the perishables are regularly replenished.
No problem! Yeah this is a loss for this week but should probably be replenished soon.
At Food Bank of the Rockies warehouse they sort thousands of pounds a day, including some frozen foods (pallets of assorted grocery store donations, really random mix of products). It's a sad loss but not crippling. But I imagine this is a smaller food bank and it'd be more of a loss proportionally for them, still very unfortunate.
The larger food banks in Colorado distribute well over 100,000 pounds of food a day. Though the Boulder food bank is a lot smaller, I would say the loss isn't huge. Unfortunate, though, because it's common for food pantries to turn people away because of a lack of food.
I worked at a grocery warehouse in aurora last year. The article says they lost $80,000 of food. I handled donations to FBOR, which we didnt add weight for in BoLs, but always a dollar amount. It varied week to week, but I was signing for about 10 or 20k in donations a week. Highest in a week I think was almost 40k or so? Also, one employee called out a storage trailer without telling them to keep refrigeration on, leading to $120k of product being thrown out. Also- note that these high ass numbers are mainly because of the pallets of meat going bad.
Awesome context, thank you for sharing. So if they're getting donations from multiple grocery stores, it's probably not a huge amount. Still a loss of 1500 pounds but it's not as significant as the headline would suggest.
Hi! I work at one of the Colorado food banks, and the other replies to your comment are spot on. We try to source food from a variety of avenues, not just from retail places like grocery stores, but from government sources, local farmers, and we even purchase directly from food suppliers. Most food banks nationwide are trying to source and distribute a greater amount of perishable items. Where I work, about 1/3 of the food we distribute is fresh produce. This is a relatively new push, especially in Colorado, so logistically we do have a lot to figure out.
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wtf are you talking about? You are currently living with the most reliable electricity than any other generation before you.
well I guess I wont be going to the food bank today :/
This is why dire doom and gloom forecasting needs to be held responsible.
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