From the morning paper, a look back at how New Mexico’s natural gas outages happened (sub/ad req):

Eventually, as the cold gained the upper hand and gas lines emptied, crews closed valves, cutting one community after another off of the gas grid — first Tularosa, then down to La Luz and Alamogordo on the gas company’s southern system. To the north, Red River went first, followed by Questa, Taos and Española in a trail of fallen dominoes that did not end until company officials made the decision to cut service to Placitas and Bernalillo.

Ken Oostman, the gas company’s vice president for technical services, said, “We were very fearful that we could lose the entire system.”