Most of Calistoga without power due to winter storm; Other PG&E outages ongoing
CALISTOGA – Most of Calistoga was without power Friday morning due to the winter storm that came through the region overnight, city officials said.
The city issued an alert shortly before 7:15 a.m. about the widespread loss of power, saying PG&E is sending crews to assess the cause of the outage.
There is no estimate yet for when power will be restored in the area.
PG&E crews are still working to restore power in many parts of the Bay Area, both from outages caused by Thursday's overnight arrival of the most powerful wave of the winter storm and from the high winds that created havoc Tuesday.
ALSO READ: Dayslong power outage wears on East Palo Alto families
As of 3 p.m. Friday, nearly 13,000 PG&E customers remained without power in the region, with the most located in the South Bay at about 4,270 customers, according to the utility. PG&E has an outage center providing information for customers on the utility's website.
Thursday afternoon, the utility was forced to shut down U.S. Highway 101 in both directions for several hours to make repairs to wires that crossed the freeway in Menlo Park.
According to PG&E, the utility asked Caltrans to close the roadway due to what they call a "challenging situation" in restoring power to thousands of customers. Several Peninsula communities, including Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, Belle Haven and North Fair Oaks are affected.
The lengthy outage has caught the attention of local lawmakers, who complained to the utility about the pace of restoring power.
"They should be able to move faster. Students in East Palo Alto are missing 2 days of school," said State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park). "My staff has made many calls over to them, and spoken to so many more residents w/o heat right now (including my house!) We must do better."
According to East Palo Alto Vice Mayor Antonio Lopez, some households in the city were without power since 1 p.m. Tuesday.
After three days without power, some East Palo Alto residents finally saw their lights come back on Thursday night.
