PG&E warns of more power shutoffs in region
54,000 customers may be impacted as dry, windy weather returns
“It [California’s landscape] has never been more primed to burn than it is right now.”
— National Weather Service meteorologist Drew Peterson
Here we go again. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is expected to start shutting off power today to tens of thousands of customers across Northern California — for the second week in a row — as the latest in a string of dry and windy weather systems raises the risk of wildfires.
About 54,000 customers across parts of 19 counties and two tribal communities are likely to lose power because of the intentional blackouts meant to prevent
PG&E’s equipment from sparking wildfires if it is damaged in the high winds, the utility said Tuesday afternoon. PG& E just finished restoring power on Friday to 41,000 customers who lost service during another shutoff event that began last Wednesday — the third in just over a month as California copes with a record fire year.
And meteorologists were already warning about the potential for an even more dangerous windstorm this coming weekend, at a time when moisture levels measured in the trees and vegetation that can fuel a wildfire are setting records for dryness, and there is little hope of rain in the forecast.
“It has never been more primed to burn than it is right now,” National Weather Service meteorologist Drew Peterson said of California’s landscape.
The latest power shutoffs are set to begin in far Northern California this evening as Diablo winds
blow southwest across the state. With 22,760 customers likely to lose power, Shasta County will bear the brunt of the blackouts, while another 11,291 customers in Butte County could lose power.
Across the Bay Area, where blackouts would start in the early morning hours Thursday, PG& E estimates it could cut power to 6,545 customers, most in the North Bay — 4,316 are likely to lose power in Napa County and 960 in Sonoma County.
The weather service has issued a red flag warning for dangerous fire weather across much of the North Bay and East Bay Hills, as well as the Santa Cruz Mountains and even the San Mateo coast, which Peterson said is rare. Forecasts
call for sustained winds of 15 to 30 mph, with the potential for gusts to reach 65 to 70 mph at high elevations.
There was a reprieve for thousands in the East Bay when PG& E updated its power shutoff plans Tuesday afternoon, though: While the utility had initially warned nearly 3,500 customers in A lameda County to expect blackouts, including several neighborhoods and businesses in the northeast corner of Livermore, by Tuesday afternoon the utility said it no longer planned to cut off power to many of those areas, dropping the number of affected customers in the county to 470.
The news was a relief for Javier Solorzano, whose family owns Tequila’s Taqueria
along North Vasco Road in Livermore, which lost power for two days during another shutoff earlier this fall.
“2020, dude,” Solorzano said. “We just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best, I guess.”
T he coronav irus has forced the restaurant to get by on outdoor dining and takeout, which has meant sales already “aren’t close to what they would be,” he said. Repeated power shutoffs mean more lost business — plus the chore of having to move food out of the restaurant so it doesn’t spoil.
“We don’t have a big corporation behind us, so it definitely hurts,” Solorzano said. “We can’t really afford to shut down for the day.”
PG & E out age maps
Tuesday afternoon showed blackouts were planned for portions of the hills of eastern Contra Costa and Alameda counties east of Danville and San Ramon, and north of Livermore. The utility estimates 563 customers in Contra Costa County could lose power. Another band of blackouts is planned farther south, near the San Antonio and Calaveras reservoirs; 236 customers in Santa Clara are likely to lose power.
In the North Bay, PG&E’s maps show the potential for outages on the west side of Calistoga and in other areas that were burned or threatened in recent weeks by the Glass Fire, which fire officials on Tuesday announced has been fully contained.
PG& E says it should be able to restore power by Thursday or Friday.
But that won’t be the end of Northern California’s fire weather. Peterson, the meteorologist, said forecasts show another off-shore wind event, even drier and windier than the one prompting PG&E’s latest blackouts, taking shape for Sunday and early next week.
The warnings have been a common occurrence this fall after a series of devastating fires sparked by a freak lightning storm in August helped turn 2020 into a record year: More than 4.1 million acres have burned so far in California this year, more than double the previous record.
“We’re pushing into some extreme, tinderbox conditions,” Peterson said.