Rocky Mountain Power warns of power shutoffs due to weekend fire weather

The bulk of Utah is under a Red Flag Warning. The critical fire conditions, high temperatures along with a forecast of high winds and low humidity, could cause new and existing fires to grow rapidly.

In response, Rocky Mountain Power has warned of a Public Safety Power Shutoff, which could affect some portions of Cedar City, Dixie, Enterprise Valley, Milford and Richfield. Roughly 4,600 customers are in the warning area, and another 1,700 are in the watch area. When the utility’s meteorologists forecast dangerous weather, the company sets a shutoff watch or warning, which could lead to an outage.

The last of this type of outage in Utah was in 2022, said spokesperson David Eskelsen.

Intentional power cuts are difficult for customers, he acknowledged, but the extreme fire weather warrants increased caution.

“Most of our power lines are engineered to withstand pretty strong winds,” he said. “But the problem in wildland areas, where it's really dry and the fuels are plentiful, that risk is significantly higher.”

Residents can seek shelter from the heat at The Heritage Center in Cedar City from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, or until power has been restored, Rocky Mountain Power said in a statement.

During periods of hot, dry and windy weather, a more common way wildfire risk affects customers is through Enhanced Safety Settings. Under these conditions, common in the eastern Wasatch Front and the Wasatch Back, power lines turn off automatically if anything — like trees, animals, or equipment — touches them. Rocky Mountain Power does notify customers of enhanced safety settings, but there’s no way to warn them before an outage.

Last year, there were 1,223 outages related to enhanced safety settings in Utah, Eskelsen said. The average duration was 2.8 hours, though outages can range from 10 minutes to 40 hours.

Power can also be cut when active wildfires threaten the utility’s equipment. Twenty-four shutoffs happened due to active fires in Utah last year, Eskelsen said, lasting around 4.5 hours, on average.

“We've spent a tremendous amount of money hardening our system against faults of all kinds,” he said.

Burying power lines would reduce risks, but it would be expensive. That would require a rate increase most customers would not tolerate, said Michele Beck, director of the Utah Office of Consumer Services.

“You could invest an unlimited amount of money, and you're still not going to bring the fire risk to zero,” said the utility consumer advocate. “You're still going to have a time where, in very high-risk areas, you might have to turn the power off.”

Utah has paid more attention to wildfires in the past five years, Beck said. A 2020 law requires large electric companies to submit wildfire mitigation plans. These plans are still in the early stages, and Beck wants to see more data.

“We really need better modeling, better risk modeling, and then an understanding of how to translate measures that reduce risk into dollars so we can say, ‘Well, what’s the right approach here?’”

Turning the power off can’t be the only way utilities mitigate risk, she said, since the cuts pose a threat to people’s health and safety. That’s especially true during extreme heat. In some areas, it might make sense to bury power lines, while others might benefit from vegetation management.

“We need to have our utilities use power shutoffs surgically,” she said.

From conversations with residents of other states, Beck said those who’ve seen fires firsthand see the power cuts differently. Outages are just as much of an inconvenience in Northern California and Hawaii, she said.

“It's very close to home, and so they're irritated, but also, they don't want another community to burn down.”

Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.