Power outage outrage
At a news conference on Thursday evening, PG&E CEO Bill Johnson apologized for the company’s communication failures during this week’s power outages.
“We were not adequately prepared,” Johnson said.
Few Bay Area residents, business owners or tourists would disagree.
PG&E’s shutoff policy is supposed to help prevent the devastating wildfires that have swept the state over the past few years. Californians understand that our increasingly dangerous fire seasons require preventive measures.
What they do not understand is how to cope with confusing and chaotic outages for which they could not plan or find adequate realtime information.
Many residents didn’t learn their power was about to be shut off — for up to six days — until the night before the outages began. There was panic as people scrambled to store perishables and make emergency arrangements, followed by mass frustration as some shutoffs were delayed for hours and hours.
PG&E doesn’t control the weather. But it does control its own website, which kept crashing during critical times. It also controls its own call centers, which were overloaded.
Finally, it controls its ability to provide solid information to customers. When is the shutoff starting? How long will it last in my area? When would PG&E shut off the power again?
Customers deserve answers to these questions. They didn’t get them this week.
Fortunately, most Bay Area PG&E customers who were affected this week had their service restored as of Friday morning. While this season has seen wildfires, the local ones have been relatively mild — particularly in comparison to the past two years.
But this does not absolve PG&E from its ongoing missteps around executing its core responsibility of providing Californians with safe, reliable power.
Instead of wining and dining its top customers at a Sonoma County winery, as it did just before pulling the plug on nearly 800,000 California accounts, PG&E needs to focus on modernizing its infrastructure. It needs to make provisions for the wildfire victims currently fighting the company in bankruptcy court.
Elected state officials, who until now have raged against the company while declining to take serious action against it, also need to focus on their core mission. Californians want a power solution that doesn’t include rampant wildfires or sudden, costly shutoffs. It’s not too much to ask for — as politicians who think otherwise will learn at the voting booth.