Heat-related power outages plague Morgan Hill for four straight days
MORGAN HILL -- People who live in Morgan Hill have dealt with four consecutive days of power outages, as a result of the extreme heat the region is facing.
"The equipment that we have throughout California is really being stressed. The extreme demand is also a part of that. We're seeing transformer failures and other equipment failures," said Teresa Alvarado, the Regional VP of PG&E's South Bay and Central Coast Region. "Because of the successive days of heat on our system, we're seeing recurring issues - not on the same equipment - but in different parts of our service area."
Suzie Riches was one of those residents, who's lost power several times since the heatwave kicked in. She says the first time, she didn't think it was a big deal. But the second time, her patience grew thin.
"The second time, I was extremely frustrated," said Riches. "And now we're like, okay what's going to happen today? How many hours is it going to be?"
On Wednesday night, during outage number two, her concern was primarily about her young children.
"I had to put my babies down for bed in diapers and spray them down with water bottles," she said. "There was no way to cool them off."
Another Morgan Hill resident, Robert Taylor, says his power was out for several hours on Wednesday, and he expects it to happen again as long as the heat persists.
"I had to sleep on top of my sheets. It was not a fun experience. Especially when you're that hot, you can't really get comfortable," he said. "We're expecting this sort of thing tonight."
PG&E crews were busy throughout Morgan Hill during the day, where tens of thousands of customers have dealt with the outages. KPIX 5 was there as one group replaced a transformer that blew due to the heat.
"These are really unprecedented conditions. PG&E has responded. Our crews are out here every day. They are working really hard to restore power just as quickly as they can," Alvarado said. "We're trying to get information out to customers really quickly as well so they can plan their lives and know when they can expect to have power again. We will continue to stay vigilant and work to ensure that our system not only keeps serving our customers under these unprecedented conditions, but also, that we are restoring power as quickly as we can."
Chris Ghione, Morgan Hill's Public Services Director, says the outages have revealed a need for a big picture discussion with PG&E, to ensure this doesn't happen again.
"Long-term, this is a much longer conversation we have to figure out how to make sure this doesn't happen in the future," he said. "We're going to be the first ones in line to work with PG&E to figure this out in the future."
Since Tuesday, around 119,000 customers have experienced a power outage in Santa Clara County, according to Alvarado. One outage in Morgan Hill impacted around 19,000 customers.
"Obviously, it's improving the equipment that we have here in our city," Ghione said. "Obviously, it's impacting us more than other areas. I think it shows what they need to do to plan for the future to support us."