High winds cause outage

The winds of spring returned to San Juan County with a vengeance on March 30 when storms caused extensive damage and cut power to large areas of the county.
The wind damaged nine separate structures owned by Rocky Mountain Power on Sunday between 3 and 4 p.m. The damage, which occurred primarily on towers south of Blanding, caused power outages in the Bluff, Montezuma Creek and Aneth areas.
Crews worked to restore power to Bluff by 10 p.m. on Sunday evening. However, the power outage continued overnight and into Monday in Montezuma Creek and Aneth.
School was canceled at Whitehorse High School and Montezuma Creek Elementary School on Monday, March 31.
Rocky Mountain Power crews are working on a number of temporary fixes while eventually replacing the structures that were damaged by the wind.
Wind gusts exceeding 50 miles per hour were recorded in several areas of San Juan County during the storm.
The emergency response was the first test of county responders after a realignment of assignments in county government.
On March 24, David Gallegos was made the county fire chief, with Kelly Pehrson as emergency manager, Tammy Gallegos as the deputy emergency manager, Linda Larson as the EMS department head, and Preston Grover as the landfill department head.