Many PG&E customers still without power

Majority of nearly 12,000 residences are in North Bay

More than 11,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers remained without power Thursday afternoon across the Bay Area, four days after a potent winter storm lashed the region with high winds and heavy downpours.

The majority of the 11,186 customers without power were concentrated in the

North Bay, where 6,597 customers remained in the dark as of 3 p.m., the utility provider reported. Another 1,799 customers had no power in the South Bay, while 1,149 Peninsula customers remained without power. The East Bay had 1,482 customers lacking service while San Francisco had less than 200 as of mid-Thursday.

The lingering outages came after the strongest storm of the winter season roared ashore over the weekend — felling trees across the state and causing power outages that impacted more than 1 million PG&E customers across the company's system. Hundreds

of thousands of Bay Area residents were affected.

On Thursday, those impacts continued. At least three schools in Sonoma County — Horicon, Kashia and West Side Union elementary schools — were closed Thursday due to either power outages or downed power lines near the buildings, according to the Sonoma County Office of Education.

However, in other areas of the region, children returned to class after power outages forced several schools to close. Among the schools back in session were Baldwin Elementary School and Oak Grove High School.

The plodding pace of repairs caused frustration among many Bay Area customers in recent days, with residents questioning the utility provider's preparedness and diligence in responding to the storm. They reported spoiled food and fast-rising expenses dealing with the prolonged outages, which affected nearly 38,000 homes and businesses as recently as Wednesday afternoon.

The for-profit utility had already been under heavy criticism for a large rate increase that took effect at the beginning of the year — with another jump in customers' bills on the way this spring.

Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman, said Wednesday the storm damaged 2,075 conductors and forced the replacement of 728 poles across the utility provider's system. Another 357 cross arms needed to be replaced, as did 247 transformers.

He apologized to customers and framed the wind and rain as “the largest single storm producing multiple customer outages in nearly 30 years.” As a result, 5,000 total employees — including 533 crews — were working to address the lingering blackouts.

The work in restoring power comes as the Bay Area enters a period of sunny, drier weather over at least the next several days. High temperatures are expected to linger in the high 50s for much of the region on Thursday and today, before rising into the low 60s by the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.

Forecasters did issue advisories noting the possibility of frost in the inner East Bay and much of the South Bay with the low temperatures overnight Thursday into today, as well as minor coastal flooding that could be brought on by high tides.