88,000 PG&E Customers Could Lose Power — Including in 5 Bay Area Counties
PG&E has warned nearly 88,000 customers, including 11,000 in the Bay Area, that they could lose power as early as Wednesday evening.
The move would be part of a “public safety power shutoff,” a last resort to prevent utility lines from causing wildfires, due to the upcoming “statewide fire weather event,” according to a press release on Wednesday.
The cutoff could impact customers in 29 counties — including roughly 11,000 customers in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties, the press release said.
Joe Merchant, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said that while they will be messaging “elevated to near-critical fire weather concerns,” he does not anticipate NWS issuing red flag warnings for most of the Bay Area, due to a lack of strong winds.
Merchant said that conditions remain dry across the Bay. Fire risk will be elevated in the East Bay Hills and the North Bay Mountains, with winds around 25 to 35 mph.
Tamar Sarkissian, a spokesperson for PG&E, said that if they do decide to shut off the power, “all hands are on deck.”
PG&E is also working with over 40 community resource centers in 23 of the impacted counties to provide device charging, Wi-Fi, air conditioning and other supplies, according to their latest press release.
Sarkissian said that they are working closely with the NWS as well as PG&E’s internal weather team to make final calls on whether or not to shut off power.
“We have weather stations in the field that send back data and information. We also have, you know, folks in the fields who are our eyes and ears of what’s really going on,” Sarkissian said.
Residents can look up their address online to see if they might be impacted and prepare for potential power loss.
“We really encourage those customers who’ve received notifications that they’re in scope to start preparing now,” Sarkissian said, who also advised people to charge their devices and to fill their freezers with ice packs and water bottles.
She said that public safety power shutoffs can last longer than standard power shutoffs. Instead of fixing one issue, as they would with a standard outage, they have to wait for the weather event to end before going out and patrolling all of the lines.
“We start going out and patrolling both by foot and helicopter to make sure that there is nothing on our lines, no vegetation, no debris, nothing that could spark an issue,” Sarkissian said. “If there is damage, we have to make repairs to it. Once all of that is done, that’s when we’re able to turn our customers back on safely.”
If this shutoff happens, it would be the sixth shutoff of the year, she said.
PG&E’s utility lines have caused numerous deadly fires in the past decade. Earlier this month, they filed a 10-year plan to put nearly 5,000 miles of utility lines underground to reduce the risk of wildfire during events like this one.