Supervisors updated on response to winter storm

Last month, over 30,000 Yolo County residents — including nearly 8,000 Woodland residents — were left without power after a massive storm.

Some homes did not have power restored for five days. Yolo County supervisors received an update on both the city, and Pacific Gas & Electric’s response to the atmospheric river that hit Northern California at the end of January.

In Yolo County, the storm hit Jan. 26, and some individuals did not regain power until Jan. 31.

Dana Carey, manager of the county’s Office of Emergency Services, explained on Tuesday that the storm saw windspeeds hit a high of 63 mph, and rainfall totaled 2.5 inches. Interstate 5 had to be closed, and multiple cars were overturned. Woodland Memorial Hospital lost power and had to rely on generators. She noted that the county did try to keep the public informed on social media, as well as worked to set up medical device charging stations.

Supervisor Don Saylor, who represents District 2, asked Carey if the county used text alerts regarding power outages, to which Carey said the county did not due to the fact that it was hard to know which areas were out of power.

Brandon Sanders, who works in public affairs for the Sierra Division of PG&E, said the company did have issues regarding communications, especially due to the “scale of the event.”

Saylor said that text alerts should be used for all residents in the county to alert them of future storms, regardless of whether or not residents are “over notified.”

Sanders explained that the company did prepare for the storm by bringing in crews from as far as Kern County to help with restoration, and bringing in more resources. He noted that the storm was the strongest since 2011, and the largest outage since 2010.

“The reality was, this event, and I mean the impacts weren’t exclusive to PG&E, we saw impacts across the Northern California region and it was just a highly damaging event,” Sanders stated. “We understand the frustration of our customers.”

District 3 Supervisor Gary Sandy, however, did not fully accept that the company had done their best to prepare for this storm. Instead, he pointed out the need for better preparation in the wake of unforeseen weather events coming forward due to climate change.

“Many of your editorial comments about the size and scope of the storm, etc. The difficulty of keeping pace, etc,” Sandy said. “Strike me as both dated and not sufficiently anticipatory of the future we’re all facing. I feel like we have utilities in crisis right now personally. Which is to say we’re seeing more demand under brand new weather conditions that are brought forward by climate change, and I have no confidence whatsoever that the utility services are preparing for that.

“And when you harken back to our emergency services, we’re a tiny county that can’t respond much and frankly we just need to see a lot more from utilities about advanced planning,” he continued. “About how they’re gonna handle crises. How they’re gonna mitigate the effects of some of these storms in the future.”

Saylor concurred with Sandy’s sentiment, noting it is important to strengthen the infrastructure in the county as climate change brings more severe weather events to the region.

Oscar Villegas, who represents District 1, stated that he would like for more communications with his residents, especially those in smaller communities, from PG&E.

Sanders noted that the company is planning safety town halls on a county-bycounty basis in order to talk to customers, and let them know how the company has operated.

“We got to get used to the fact that we’re gonna have these sort of events. We’ve had the rain, we’ve had the wind, we’ve had the fire,” Villegas said, noting the importance of communication.

“The only thing we haven’t had is wind, rain and fire at the same time, and that’s probably coming up next year.”

Carey said that, in future events, the county will need to know what residents need medical help in the case of an outage, as well better access to estimated times for power restoration. She said the county should also keep lists of critical facilities, build community resource centers and work on getting as much accurate information as possible out to the public.