Power returns to Quay County

Xcel Energy officials still aren’t sure what caused it, but power has been restored to Tucumcari and other Quay County communities.

The power was out nearly four hours in Tucumcari. Customers in Logan, San Jon and Bard were without power for about an hour.

Power in Tucumcari went out about 9:30 a.m. Xcel spokesman Wes Reeves said it was restored at 1:07 p.m.

Hospital and 911 emergency services were not shut down since both have generators.

Traffic lights were out, and officials installed temporary four-way stop signs.

Tucumcari Fire Chief Mike Cherry said police and fire services were not interrupted.

Elizabeth Brophy, public information officer for Presbyterian Healthcare Services, said a generator at Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital can provide power for 48 hours and the generator can be refueled if necessary.

Farmers Electric Cooperative director of member services Tom Moore said Farmers purchases its power from Xcel Energy but was able to reroute lines to restore power after an hour.

Reeves said the cause of the outage remained unknown early this afternoon.

“After the line tripped, we initially tried to re-energize and that failed," Reeves said. “At that point we chose to inspect the line mile by mile before trying to energize it again.” Reeves said when workers re-energized a second time the line held.

“Up to this point our efforts were focused on getting the power back on. We now will switch into an investigative mode to determine what caused the outage in the first place,” he said.