• Alpine Fire Chief Mike Vogt opens fire dept. and offers it as a place to stay warm. 

A copper wire burned down in the power grid serving Alpine Wednesday, Dec. 27, causing power to be lost to most of the community at approximately 9 p.m.

Lower Valley Energy crews responded initially bringing power back to the northwestern side of the community.

Crews continued working on the problem throughout the evening in order to restore power on both sides of U.S. highway 89 in the business district and on the north side of Greys River Road.

The problem was traced to an overhead copper wire on the mountainside south of the highway that had burned down.  This part of the system is already designated for a conversion to underground power in the coming year. It’s currently part of an overhead to underground project. An LVE bucket truck was dispatched to the site to help with overhead repairs.

Power was first restored to some areas at approximately 11:30 p.m. with additional power coming back on through the night.

However, a “cold load pick-up” problem on the system blew two different fuses at 4 a.m. causing the power to go down again in limited locations.

Power was fully restored to Alpine by 8 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 28.

Five members of Lower Valley Energy’s response team worked at the Alpine site throughout the evening.

Alpine Fire Chief Mike Vogt opened the fire department for the evening, allowing residents to use it as a place to stay warm if needed while power was restored to the community.