ESPAÑOLA, N.M. – While PNM is still working to power customers, there’s another company in our state trying to do the same.

Jemez Co-Op services part of northern New Mexico, including Española. Some have been without power since the snow first started to fall. 

“We’re doing our best. We’re just doing a lot. It’s a tough job for those guys to be around the cold, and they’re doing it,” said Joseph Sanchez, general manager of Jemez Co-Op Electric. 

Sanchez says they’re doing what they can to get power back on. There are still thousands of customers without power Friday night across the Española Valley.

Sanchez says they did anticipate some outages from this storm, but not to this extent.

“But due to the nature of these early, heavy, wet snow storms and then the leaves on the trees, typically, those are the worst for utilities. They cause more issues than a general snowstorm later in the season,” said Sanchez.

Española City Councilor Sam Ledoux has also been without power.

“The power outages started happening around Wednesday evening. Some people, they said it started around 1 o’clock in the morning. Me, personally, the power outage started around 5 a.m. and it seems that it was just at different times, depending on where people were on the grid, and what circuit that they were connected to,” said Ledoux.

He says concern is more than just being in the dark.

“There was a lot of concerns about food spoiling. There was a lot of concerns about people who had medicine that needed to be refrigerated. I myself, you know, went to my parent’s home because I had medicine that needed to be refrigerated, and brought it to my parent’s home in Nambe, and our power just went out here again,” Ledoux said. 

Jemez Co-Op had crews out in one of the hardest hit area’s the Zia Estates.  

Ledoux says the city has opened up some warming areas as well, and he hopes to get more available.

“We partnered with the county to open the Lucero Center over on the west side as a heating center, and it was open overnight to anybody who needed it, who needed warmth. So we were glad to be able to do that. We also had the senior center near Española elementary open for people who needed warmth during the day. I’m hopeful that maybe we, if these outages persist, we could find ways to open more warming centers,” said Ledoux. 

As for getting the power restored, the goal for the Co-Op was to get that done by Friday night, and possibly get folks reimbursed for what they’ve lost. 

“When this is all over, we’ll evaluate these losses with our insurance. And people are free to put claims, and we pretty much leave it to our insurance to decide how that’s handled. So we submit those claims to them,” Sanchez said. 

Sanchez says he doesn’t take this situation lightly.

“It’s not even just the refrigerators, freezers. Some people are on oxygen. Other people have the devices they use to help them sleep. So there’s a lot of major issues that rely on electricity. So these outages are a big deal. So it’s a life at risk,” said Sanchez.