Denver substation explosion & fire cuts power to thousands
View KUSA-TV slide show from the fire
An explosion at an Xcel power substation near 14th and Jackson sent a large column of smoke into the air that could be seen across the city Monday about 6:30 p.m.
“It wasn’t as loud as a bomb going off, it was just like amazing – boom, boom, boom – then the power goes out,” said Elmo Starling, who was near the plant went the explosion occurred.
At least 31,000 people in the area are without power. Xcel Energy spokesperson Tom Henley says they are working to restore power by switching the load to other areas of the distribution system. But he says it could be Tuesday before full power is restored.
“We have to wait until mid-morning to see the damage the fire created and determine what we need to do to fix issues before we get a good estimate of how long it will take to get everyone restored,” Henley said.
Rose Medical Center was part of the outage and sustained damage to its backup generator. Power has been restored to the hospital but during the outage, 9 patients were transferred to other hospitals.
Xcel says eight circuits went down as a result of the explosion. The cause is being investigated.
