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AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) — After storms rolled through the area, some residents were left without power for hours.

On Friday, Xcel Energy reported thousands without power across the state.

The Moore family in Aurora said they experienced a 16-hour outage, which quickly became a matter of life or death for some of their pets: two bearded dragons.

“Since their light’s been on, for an hour now, they’re both really cold to the touch still,” mother Erica Moore said.

Beau and Peach, the family’s bearded dragons, live in an aquarium with lamps that provide their heat.

“When it gets too cold too, they don’t eat as well,” Moore said, “as they can stop their digestion. So if they have food still stuck in their stomach it can rot.”

Two bearded dragons under light in a terrarium
The Moore family’s bearded dragons, Peach and Beau. (KDVR)

For most of the night on Thursday and into Friday afternoon, there was no electricity at the Moores’ home in Aurora.

“Even at 70 degrees it is really hard in the house to keep them warm if their lamps don’t work, and we have been at the high 50s, low 60s since last night,” Moore said.

The dragons were at risk of freezing without their lamps.

“(Peach) was just stuck on her hammock, I had to peel her off of it and she was just so cold. I was afraid she actually wasn’t alive,” Moore said.

When Moore checked with Xcel Energy for any information, she said it wasn’t accurate.

“I was very confused because on their outages updates, they said the power was restored at 2:26 in the morning. It was not,” Moore said.

Instead of clarifying, Moore said an operator asked about their bill.

“Why are you even talking about that right now. We don’t have heat,” Moore said. “We have animals that require heat to survive.”

It’s a serious problem for the Moore family and others who worry about the impact of a stronger storm one day.

“If this is how long it takes just over that, they need to get a better game plan, because this was ridiculous,” Moore said.

For their part, Xcel Energy provided this statement:

Outages in Aurora were caused by the thunderstorms and subsequent flooding in the area. We were unable to repair some of our equipment and restore power to some customers until the water levels subsided. We still have some outages in that area due to flooding that we will restore as soon as possible.

The customer outages you identified were part of a larger outage in the area that were grouped together on the map, which is why the customer may not have seen the outage listed at their specific address.

We understand losing power can be a major inconvenience for customers, so we appreciate their patience as crews work to safely restore power as quickly as possible.

Xcel Energy