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LAS CRUCES - The sun was cold comfort Thursday as thousands of Mesilla Valley residents struggled with electrical outages, natural gas shortages and burst pipes as an arctic storm walloped the borderland with the coldest temperatures in 35 years.
For the third day in a row, city and county offices and public schools will remain closed today at the urging of El Paso Electric, which said that energy supply was so low, a high demand could knock the entire grid off-line for 12 hours.
Chilly temperatures and statewide energy shortages prompted Gov. Susana Martinez to declare the first state of emergency of her term.
Meteorologist John Park said Thursday's low of minus-5 degrees hadn't been seen in the area since 1976.
"Both of our power plants are still down - the Newman and the Rio Grande," said El Paso Electric spokeswoman Teresa Souza. "We don't have the electricity generation from our plants right now. We continue to work on getting the turbines up and running, however the cold weather is (thwarting those efforts). Every time we try to thaw out a certain mechanism and go on to the next, the first one is already frozen. We were hoping to get at least a couple of turbines up and running, but the weather's going to dip to 7 degrees tonight. That's what's hurting a lot of our efforts."
El Paso Electric has enough natural gas, Souza said, and was able to buy enough power on the open market to prevent outages during daylight hours Thursday.
"But there's only so much power that our transmission lines can carry into this area," Souza said, and it wasn't enough to meet the demand during the recent chill, especially with some generators undergoing regular winter maintenance that helps them handle the demands of summer use.
Why wasn't the company prepared?
"This is a once-in-a-long-time cold freeze," Souza said. "Our area hasn't experienced something like this in years. This isn't common for our area. We knew it was coming, because we'd heard reports from the National Weather Service ... so in preparation we tried to bring some of our generation units out of maintenance mode, put them to work, but the cold freeze, it was just too much and everything froze. The instrumentation froze."
Once temperatures return to normal, El Paso Electric plans to gather its engineers and power plant employees and determine how they can improve their generation capacity or prepare for another such cold snap, Souza said.
But for now, Las Cruces residents were urged to keep their electric, heat and water needs low - to stay indoors, turn off unneeded lights, put on a sweater and put off that load of laundry or dishes for just another day.
"I spoke to (El Paso Electric's president of New Mexico Affairs) Clay Doyle this afternoon and he was pleading with me to keep city government closed," said City Manager Robert Garza. "At this point, I'm more concerned about energy as a whole, electricity and gas, as opposed to getting city government completely back up and running. We're in good shape. We'll have all emergency services, police and fire, along with transit operating as usual. But with the concerns about energy, Clay told me that if the electrical grid were to go down it could take 12 hours to bring it back up."
Faced with such a disaster, Las Cruces Public Schools Superintendent Stan Rounds decided Thursday afternoon to call an unprecedented third snow day for the city's 36 schools.
"We just pull so much power and we've got (busted) pipes everywhere," said Rounds, who said crews had already responded to breaks at Camino Real and Vista middle schools and Conlee and Mesilla Park elementary schools, among others. "We've just had our hands full today. The good news, right now, is that we have enough (classroom) hours that, even with (today's) closure, we will not have to make up any days because we exceed those hours by so much in instruction. That was my biggest worry."
Like the schools, home-owners were also struggling with frozen pipes. Sutherlands general manager Gary Mook said the home improvement store's business had increased by about 30 percent since Tuesday, with heat tape, melting salt, stove pellets and some sizes of pipe wrap selling out.
Ken Needham, a landlord who manages 11 units in Las Cruces, said even his precautions weren't enough to keep seven of them from freezing. He spent Thursday working to restore water to his tenants and calling plumbers - one of whom said he'd had so much work Wednesday night he didn't return home until 4 a.m. Thursday.
"We haven't had this kind of problem in the 30 years we've had the apartments," said Needham, who said all water would be restored by Friday. "Actually, when the forecast was that cold weather was coming in, I insulated a lot of the pipes. And they still froze."
Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462.
The cold, hard facts
•Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range are expected to be open.
•District court, magistrate court and federal court planned to be open, but the district attorney's office will be closed.
•Las Cruces, Do-a Ana County and the town of Mesilla offices will remain closed, but city services including public transportation and trash pick-ups, which will last through the weekend to make up for delays, will resume today.
•School and programs are canceled in Las Cruces and Hatch, but Gadsden schools had not yet made an announcement by Thursday evening. Las Cruces athletic events will be canceled.
•The New Mexico State University main campus and branch campus will be closed, as will the University of Texas at El Paso.
•As of Thursday evening, Interstate 25 was closed north of Springer, but all other roads were open. U.S. 70 east of Alamogordo was listed as having severe driving conditions.
Whom to call?
•In case of emergency in Las Cruces or Do-a Ana County, call 911.
•For the city of Las Cruces, visit www.las-cruces.org or call 541-2100.
•For non-emergency call to Las Cruces police call 526-0795.
•For Las Cruces Public Schools, visit www.lcps.k12.nm.us or call 647-5277.
•For Gadsden schools, visit www.gisd.k12.nm.us or call 882-6267.
•For White Sands Missile Range's schedule, visit www.wsmr.army.mil.
•For Do-a Ana County, visit www.donaanacounty.org or call (575) 647-7200.
•For weather and road conditions, visit www.nmshtd.state.nm.us or www.nmroads.com. Or, dial 511.
