Santa Cruz braces for Power Safety Shutoff
SANTA CRUZ >> Communities in Santa Cruz prepared for likely PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff Wednesday evening after the utility and county officials warned that severe weather would impact the area.
Wednesday afternoon, the county announced that power shutoffs were likely between 8-10 p.m. that evening, with more than 6,000 local customers potentially impacted. Once power is shutoff, full restoration is expected at 10 p.m. Friday.
Altogether, PG&E said about 1%, or 54,250, of its 5.4 million customers in 24 Northern California counties are planned to have their power shut off. In the nine Bay Area counties, the utility said that 22,109 customers are expected to lose power. The majority of the outages in the Bay Area are expected in unincorporated areas of Napa County and the Oakland Hills.
“If the weather improves we could see a smaller number,” said PG& E spokeswoman Mayra Tostado. “If it worsens, that number could go up. We are closely monitoring the weather.”
To see if an address could be impacted, visit pgealerts. aler ts. pge. com/addresslookup/.
Dry fuel conditions and anticipated high winds have placed parts of Santa Cruz County at critical risk for fire, and a Red Flag Warning is in effect, according to the county.
“Unfortunately it doesn’t seem we’re going to see much relief even in areas seeing moderate winds until Friday,” said Brayden Murdock, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey. “The big thing about the dryness is we’re not really seeing a big shift within the longterm forecast, where all of a sudden things are going to be better again.”
Meanwhile, PG&E is es
tablishing several Community Resource Centers in the area, allowing residents to charge devices including communications and medical equipment.
The centers were open from 5-10 p.m. Wednesday, and from 8 a.m.-10 p.m. thereafter through restoration.
The locations of the Resource Centers are:
• Unitarian Universal Fellowship, 6401 Freedom Blvd., Aptos
• St. Michael’s Church, 13005 Pine St., Boulder Creek
• Highlands Park, 8500 Highway 9, Ben Lomond
• Enterprise Technology Center, 100 Enterprise Way, Scotts Valley.
County officials said the utility is directly contacting customers enrolled in PG& E’s medical baseline program.
For those with medical issues or equipment that depend on power and don’t have a backup plan during the Public Safety Power Shutoff, reach out to the Central Coast Center for Independent Living for immediate assistance.
Visit cccil.org or call 831757-2968. Medically vulnerable individuals may also access services by visiting disabilitydisasteraccess.org.
Powerlines have caused some of the most devastating fires in California in recent years, including the 2017 Wine Country fires and the 2018 Camp Fire, which wiped out the town of Paradise. The liabilities led PG&E to file for bankruptcy. As a result, the utility has adopted a tactic first used by San Diego Gas & Electric after its lines caused fires in 2007 in Southern California: Pre-emptively shutting down, or ‘de-energizing’ wires for a few hours or days during extreme windy, hot conditions.
The technique has been controversial, but it has paid off. After the shutoffs on Sept. 7-10 and Sept. 2729, PG& E crews found 93 areas where strong winds blew trees into lines or blew powerlines off poles. But wildfires didn’t start because the lines had been temporarily shut off.