Sacramento SMUD customers going on 7 days without power after California storm
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - Powerless for days. Some Sacramento families have been without power since last weekend, as another round of storms is forecast to arrive this weekend.
Families going on day seven with no power have been left with no patience.
Brothers 11-year-old Jude and four-year-old Dean are dealing with another day without heat or light.
"I can usually get a flashlight," Dean said.
Their mother, Serena Renehan, is one of the hundreds of SMUD customers still waiting for power to be restored.
"Right in the middle of the city," Renehan said.
The family's food has gone bad. As she throws it out, Renehan is now itemizing everything -- hoping for reimbursement.
Her family spent Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the dark.
"I don't know why they can't just let us know what's going on or give us a real timeline," Renehan said. "Maybe we could have made some more permanent plans to go somewhere and stay somewhere."
Calvin Crockett is Renehan's neighbor, and also without power, he decided to leave home and stay with his parents so he could power up his computer for his remote work.
"It's like Sacramento," Crockett said. "I did not expect this to happen. I was pretty shocked, pretty surprised this happened. I'm peeved. I'm incredibly frustrated. I hope SMUD gets this taken care of sooner than later, because it's disrespectful to the citizens of Sacramento, and yeah, it's a shame."
SMUD announced Friday its outages are a fraction of what they had been at the height of the storms, and that the final transformers and circuits not working are their most complex cases.
It's little relief to Sacramento families still waiting and wondering, when will the lights come back on?
"Frustrating, very frustrating," Renehan said.