Power on ... but not for long

Utility issued ‘all clear’ around 9 a.m. Monday, but relief could be short-lived

Pacific Gas and Electric will cut power to as many as 600,000 customers beginning Tuesday morning as high winds return to Northern California and the risk of fires remains at an all-time high, company officials said Monday evening.

The announcement came as the utility was scrambling to restore power to roughly 970,000 customers who lost it over the weekend amid fierce winds that walloped the state and fed the massive Kincade Fire in Sonoma County. The lights were back on to roughly a third of those customers by 5 p.m. Monday, officials said.

But it wasn’t clear Monday how many customers would still be without power before the next round of shutdowns begin Tuesday — and possibly last through Thursday morning.

While the winds are not expected to top the velocity of those over the weekend, vegetation that feeds a fire will be even drier because of the earlier gusts, Scott Strenfel, PG&E’s meteorologist, said at a news conference in San Francisco.

“This will be strong and prolonged event,” he said.

According to a company statement, PG&E said it was checking roughly 32,000 miles of power lines as it restores power. It has received about 50 preliminary reports of damage from downed trees, poles and power lines. More than 6,300 workers were involved, as were 46 helicopters, according to the statement.

Depending on the amount of damage, PG&E is able to restore power to 10,000 to 20,000 people an hour, said Mark Quinlan, incident commander for the current outage, at a press conference Sunday .

The announcements came shortly after Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a major investigation by the state Public Utilities Commission into PG&E’s preemptive power cutoffs.

“I want to see the CPUC launch a total reform of power shutoff rules and regulations,” the governor said in a statement.

“Utilities must be held accountable and be aggressively penalized for their overreliance on (power shutoffs) and the (result) of this investigation must be new rules and regulations to do that,” Newsom said. “I also want to see customers not charged for (power shutoffs). It seems obvious, but under the current rules, utilities can do just that. It’s unacceptable and must be remedied.”

Company officials did not immediately respond to the governor’s remarks.

“It is our objective to restore every customer that is impacted as quickly and safely as we can, and we always want to do that before they experience another event. This one is going to be tight,” said Andrew Vesey, president and CEO of PG&E.

There was confusion Monday about when and where power was being restored.

On Monday morning, Berkeley warned roughly 21,0000 residents living high in the hills that the power may stay off until Friday, but then reversed course at 4 p.m., tweeting that it had been restored, for now. City Spokesman Matthai Chakko reminded residents in shutoff areas to remain alert and ready.

“The more that people take independent actions to prepare themselves for power outage and wildfire evacuation, the more effectively we can help those who are vulnerable,” he said

Also Monday the beleaguered utility filed a required report with state regulators on its previous large power shutdown in early October, saying that outage was plagued with problems on its web site and at call centers and community resource centers it set up.

“PG&E acknowledges falling short,” it said in the report to the CPUC. It said new web pages should be able to handle more traffic, and resources centers would be enlarged.

The utility’s system appeared to function better over the weekend, although there were lags Monday as its online maps showed some areas as being without power after it had been restored. Officials said 68 community resource centers were open over the weekend.