UPDATE: Nearly 300,000 PG&E Customers Lost Power, 110,000 Dark Thursday Night, SF Hardest Hit
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Heavy wind and rain from Thursday's massive storm have left much of San Francisco without power for most of the day, with 276,000 PG&E customers system wide losing power since the storm started, and 110,000 still without power.
UPDATE: More Than 3,400 Without Power In Bay Area Due To Storm
San Francisco was hardest hit, with 70,000 customers across a vast swath of the city including downtown high rises in the dark beginning early Thursday morning through mid-morning.
An estimated 7,400 Pacific Gas & Electric customers remain without power in San Francisco, as of about 5:45 p.m. Thursday.
PG&E spokesman Joe Molica said most of the outages are in the Richmond District, Marina and portions of the Tenderloin. The big issue in San Francisco was a failure at the Larkin substation. Molica said they do expect to restore power by 6:00 p.m.
The outage forced the shutdown of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Montgomery Station for a time Thursday morning. A transformer blew out near high-rise hotels, including one out front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The Embarcadero Center was also shut down for a time after power went out there as well.
Overall in the region, there are more than 16,000 people without power, spread over the East Bay, Peninsula, North Bay, and South Bay.
Molica said they have been preparing for the storm for more than a week, but weren't anticipating as many trees and wires coming down. "All summer we've been hearing from our vegetation department that a lot of trees have been stressed, so they were very susceptible to coming down," he said. "That's exactly what we saw today. A lot of wires coming down. We do want folks to be safe out there. If you see a downed or hanging low wire, please call us and stay away."
Molica said crews are working around the clock to try to safely restore power to all customers without it, though he could not give a clear estimate on when power would be restored.
