Rural Napa County prepares for latest PG&E power shutoff
Residents in the areas affected by the utility's Public Safety Power Shutoffs are no strangers to fire danger. People in Napa County were preparing for what they say has become routine.
"Yeah, Pope Valley Garage is the first AAA contract on the West Coast in California," explained Jeff Paraday, who runs a small piece of California history.
His garage has been around about as long as the automobile, but not without a few scares.
"Power line went down," he said of an incident in 2015. "Charged the guard rail, lit both sides of the road. The fire came in the back of the garage and burnt this hill. Saved the blacksmith shop, Patrick by himself with his water truck."
Now, the power is about to go out again as a strong wind event arrives, bringing high fire danger along with it.
"It's not convenient," he says. "But we're used to it. And anybody that has lived here for any amount of time is certainly prepared for that."
"Getting ready for this, we keep these two freezers running with generators and then we populate this with as much as our ice as we can so we don't lose any of that," said Jeremy Wood. "That's always kind of fun. And this generator out here, this big old bad boy, we just keep it going."
Wood manages the Pope Valley Market, where there is also a game plan for this.
"Extension cords, run them in and make sure everything's on," he laughed. "Then lots and lots and lots of fuel."
"So yes, it is getting kind of routine," said a man pumping gas into a tank for his generator in Angwin.
PG&E says it's trying to make this less of a routine, and less inconvenient, by getting more precise with where the power is turned off, with a system that is less vulnerable than it was in 2017.
"More and more inspections," a spokesperson said Thursday. "We've hardened our system in a number of different ways. We've done some system hardening projects. We've really revamped the Public Safety Power Shutoff customer notification process."
"Fire of 2020 really hit home, locally, for everyone," Paraday said.
Ask locals about the loss of power and that is often the answer. It's measuring a few days of inconvenience against the recent history of disaster across this region.
"The last couple years, ever since 2017 with the fires, everyone in this area has evacuated five times in a four-year span," Wood explained. "Twice in 2020, and then once a year before that."
"Ultimately it's for everybody's safety and we just have to deal with it," Paraday said. "It's a way of life."
These shutoffs can shift course. The most recent planned outage, about two weeks ago, was abandoned just about the time they were supposed to cut the lights off.
As of Thursday, the lights in this section of Napa County are set to be out through 4 p.m. on Sunday.