PG&E shuts off power to thousands of Bay Area, Northern California customers because of fire danger
Thousands of Pacific Gas and Electric customers were without power Wednesday morning following a new round of public safety outages because of high winds and low humidity.
PG&E said it began de-energizing customers at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday evening as part of its planned Public Safety Power Shutoffs in areas prone to wildfires. The outages began with 1,339 customers in Lake and Sonoma counties and continued at 7 p.m. with 1,019 customers losing power in Napa and Solano counties.
There were outages Wednesday across the Bay Area and Northern California; including Alameda, Butte, Colusa, Contra Costa, Glenn, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Stanislaus, Tehama, and Yolo counties. View PG&E outage map.
As of 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, most of the Bay Area outages were in Napa (4,510) and Solano (4,496) counties. Sonoma County had 1,815 customers without power, Santa Clara County had 1,585, Contra Costa County had 1,228 and Alameda 2,238. PG&E said additionally, there were another 9,000 Bay Area customers without power due to weather issues like downed wires, on top of the more than 15,000 in the region impacted by the public safety shutoffs.
The power was expected to be restored sometime on Thursday, PG&E said.
Statewide, an estimated 22,000 are affected by the power shutoffs, and another 32,000 are estimated to be without power due to strong winds.
PG&E said there were no impacts to polling locations or tabulation centers except for one temporary outage at a Santa Rosa polling site. The utility said it dispatched a generator to the site in response.
PG&E said it had opened 29 Community Resource Centers throughout 17 counties affected by the power shutoff. Customers can also contact 211 for help in finding transportation assistance, hotel support, and food options during power outages.
The Bay Area was under a Red Flag Warning because of the critical fire danger the winds and low humidity presented. The warning was in effect until 7 a.m. Thursday for most of the Bay Area, a large swath of the Northern California Central Valley, and the higher terrains of the Central Coast.
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