Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Kimberly Houk reporting About 2,700 people along the Wasatch Front are still without electricity this evening. Some people haven't had lights for about three days. And Utah Power reports there are new outages that ocurred today, because of the weather.
Crews will remain in the field until every power problem is resolved.
News Specialist Kimberly Houk rode along with a few power company crews today.
These workers are cold and they're tired. They've been working around the clock since the snow started falling early Friday morning.
They're expected to work 24 hours straight, then they get an eight hour break.
Todd Jamison/ Power worker: "My body is tired. But I'm just tired all over, I guess."
Laramie Brothers: "It takes a toll on you. You get a little weaker after a couple of days go by."
Laramie Brothers is on his second 24 hour shift. He's been going strong since 3 o'clock yesterday.
Laramie Brothers: "It gets pretty cold. At three in the morning it doesn't matter who you are or what company you're from. We just try our best to keep each other safe and do our job."
A dangerous job that requires all to be alert.
Brothers says he knows a lot of people are without power and not able to turn on their heaters. But he says when working with electricity, safety comes first.
Laramie Brothers: "We try to go as fast as you can. But really you can't rush things in this line of work. You rush something, somebody's going to get killed."
Workers say they are running into two very different kinds of people while they're working-- those that are very happy with them and grateful they turned their power back on, and others who are very angry. Workers say they've had things thrown at them and had people yell at them while they're working on the power lines.
Jerry Roadhouse/ Power Worker: "They're mad because we're not there. But we can't fix them all at the same time."
The power company says the power lines that service the most homes get priority. Then workers will be around to fix individual homes.
Everyone's power should be back on by Tuesday.
Workers say this is a very time consuming job, because they have to re-string a lot of the power lines.
There is one shelter open for people without power. It's at the Sorenson Center at 855 West California Avenue.