Here are lessons learned fromthe last shutoff

What did I learn during the last Pacific Gas and Electric

Co. public safety power shutoff? Well, one thing was that my generator didn’t work quite the way I expected it to. Thirty amps of current on one leg in the panel isn’t enough to run the furnace and refrigerator. Other lessons include:

While not great, leaving the fridge off at night wasn’t the end of the world. I have a lot of tree work to get doneWhile PG&E is responsible for lots of these fires, they’re not responsible for all of them. These PSPSs were like no other power outage I’ve ever experienced. This time, when it was out, it was out everywhere. Itwas like those Armageddon survivor movies.

PG&E has drones and they’re creepy. At 4 a.m., I was awoken by this weird humming sound. I looked out over the valley and could see these flashing triangles of light — sometimes red, mostly white. They are sometimes stationary, sometimes zipping around, but many of them were hovering in our neighborhood. Uber creepy for sure.

I’m going to work on my electrical panel and rewire it. I should be able to run the fridge and the heater ( even though itwas warmduring the day

— it got cold at night andmy 93-year-old mom doesn’t do well when she get’s too cold). Most importantly I’m planning to get an uninterruptable power supply for my AT&T box. Every time the generator croaked , my cable box would forget everything. So, at timeswewould spend more time watching the spinning beachball of death than the actual TV. Things could’ve been worse but overall, I learned a lot and no doubt next time I’ll learn even more.

— Guy Palmer, Mill Valley