Campbell County commissioners, county directors discuss how to better deal with power outages

GILLETTE — In the coming months, various Campbell County departments will be working to come up with a policy on what to do the next time the power goes out.

On Nov. 13, tens of thousands of people in Wyoming were hit by a massive power outage. In Campbell County, the outage lasted a couple of hours.

At a county directors meeting last week, Campbell County Commissioners discussed what was learned during that situation.

A generator runs portions of the courthouse, but for the most part, the building was out of power. The commissioners, who were holding a workshop at the time, had to use flashlights as they worked through the nuclear waste storage resolution.

Commissioner Jerry Means asked what it would cost to install a generator that could keep the entire courthouse running during an extended power outage.

Michael Moore, executive director of public works, said it would be “fairly substantial,” but that it could be an option. Another option would be to invest in a generator that just keeps the courthouse’s furnace going.

“If it’s an extended power outage, you don’t want the building to cool down and have pipes start freezing,” he said.

Todd Chatfield, director of the Northeast Wyoming Regional Airport, said there is a backup generator for the terminal building. It cost about $750,000, which the airport paid for using federal funds, and it took about two years to arrive. To get a generator for the whole courthouse, Chatfield said, would probably cost two or three times as much.

Commissioner Jim Ford said that when it comes to power outages, or any weather emergency, continuation services is third on the list of priorities, behind public safety and protection of facilities.

A few directors brought to the commissioners’ attention some of the issues that they faced during the outage.

Cam-plex Executive Director Aaron Lyles said he’ll have to dip into a contingency fund to repair damage that occurred.

“We have between $20,000 and $40,000 worth of equipment that was fried from the power ramping on and off a couple times,” he said.

John Jackson, director of the Campbell County Public Library, said that when the electricity went out, he and his staff “immediately” began removing people from the library due to safety concerns.

“I would prefer being able to make a call after half an hour to send everybody home because we have to remove our patrons anyway,” he said.

And Dwayne Dillinger, executive director of Parks and Recreation, said that without power, the ice at the two ice rinks started warming up. The ice is usually kept at about 17 degrees, and with no electricity, it warmed up to 23 degrees.

“At about 26 (degrees) you start to break that bond between the floor and the ice and the paint starts to run, so we reached out to a bunch of contractors in town and got a bunch of concrete blankets lined up,” he said.

If the power hadn’t come back on, they would have covered the ice with those blankets to keep it from melting.

Another problem that Parks and Rec ran into was that there were 200 kids in the Rec Center when the power went out. The school district didn’t want them back on the buses because the traffic lights were not working.

“The kids just sat in the gym for probably two hours,” Dillinger said.

Similarly, school buses showed up to the Campbell County Public Library. Even though the library was closed, the buses had to drop them off there and couldn’t bring them any farther, Jackson said.

“The bus driver told me the kids had to get a ride home. That’s not very good at all,” he said.

If he had the ability to make the call earlier to close the library, they may have been able to avoid this situation with the school kids, Jackson said.

This story was published on Nov. 24, 2025.