Rain Causes Power Outages Affecting Thousands In East Bay
RICHMOND (CBS SF) -- Thousands of Pacific Gas and Electric customers are without power in seven East Bay cities Thursday morning, a PG&E spokesperson said.
Scattered outages throughout the East Bay began around 12:28 a.m., according to PG&E spokesperson J.D. Guidi.
Rain Causes Power Outages Affecting Thousands In East Bay
At the height of the outage, a little after 2 a.m., 11,850 customers were affected throughout the cities of Richmond, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Albany, San Pablo, El Sobrante, and Kensington, Guidi said.
Officials believe the outages were caused by this morning's rain, as multiple forms of weather-related troubles have been reported by PG&E field agents, according Guidi.
Without periodic rain, Guidi told KCBS, dust gathers on the equipment which then shorts out when it gets wet. Power poles catch fire then have to be de-energized so firefighters can put the fire out.
"We have troublemen as well as assessment crews in the area; we're bringing crews from outside the area as well. They have been mobilized and heading in to assist with those efforts this morning. We don't have a set estimate but we do hope to get everybody back by the late morning hours," Guidi said.
As of 2:47 a.m., the number of customers affected by the outage dropped to 6,580, with 5700 of those outages coming from Richmond, Guidi said.
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