Race underway to restore days-long power outage in Groveland amid high heat
GROVELAND — Many in the Tuolumne County community of Groveland are on their third day without power during a heatwave and the biggest holiday weekend of the year.
From businesses feeling impacts to short-term renters on the 4th of July weekend, the power outage has wreaked havoc during a huge weekend for the area.
There's plenty of foot traffic in the heat shelter in Groveland.
"I'm pretty capable of adapting to warm weather," Stephen Cocconi said. "The annoyances are that I've lost everything in my fridge."
After nearly three days of power outages in the area, emergency response team head Bob Asquith is concerned for the elderly in town.
"They don't know how to get help short of calling 911 and a lot of seniors are scared to do that, so they're just roasting in their homes," he told CBS Sacramento.
Utility manager Peter Campo is balancing power and water.
"When the power's off, these guys have to respond and be on call 24/7," he said.
PG&E told CBS13 the cause of the outage is under investigation but the shutdown came from the enhanced powerline safety settings.
"It allows our power lines to automatically turn off within one-tenth of a second when there's a hazard," said Evelyn Escalera with PG&E. "For example, when a tree branch falls into a power line."
The enhanced powerline safety setting is designed to shut off power lines to prevent wildfire creation but it can have unintended consequences.
"Some of these areas, we do see reoccurring outages," Escalera said.
Groveland's power lines have not gone underground yet.
"We are planning to underground in our high-threat areas," Escalera said. "I know we're starting in the north first."
That means that these rolling blackouts take a toll on the town that has had to replace multiple generators over the years and are having to balance safety, travelers, their own businesses and the heat.
"They don't have internet access, so they don't know what to do," Asquith said of some of the older Groveland residents. "There's a lot of things that can go wrong in a rural community like this."