PG&E: Nearly 200 customers to lose power
An estimated 187 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers in Humboldt County will lose power starting Thursday afternoon and extending into Friday evening, a spokesperson for the company said Wednesday afternoon in an email.
The customers, including one baseline customer who depends on electricity for medical reasons, are in the southeastern unincorporated parts of the county said PG&E’s Deanna Contreras. She mentioned addresses in Alderpoint, Bridgeville, Blocksburg, Ruth and Zenia areas, many of which have been affected by the August Complex Fire, the largest fire in the state’s modern history.
“Some areas are getting shut off tonight,” Contreras said of some of the 24 other counties affected by the potential outages. “Humboldt County, the expected
shutoff time is for Thursday evening between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.”
Humboldt County is coordinating with the utility on the outage and said there will be a community resource center established at the Bridgeville Community Center. The center will be open from noon to 10 p.m. on Thursday, according to Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Samantha Karges. The center, located at 38717 Kneeland Road, will be open Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Contreras later said.
According to PG&E, the resource centers typically provide “ADA-accessible restrooms and handwashing stations; medicalequipment charging; Wi-Fi; bottled water; and non-perishable snacks.”
Contreras said the utility, based on current weather forecasts, expects to check the lines affected by the outage Friday morning and hopes to have power restored by that evening.
The move by the utility comes as the county is under a red flag warning for fire weather with higher temperatures and increasing offshore winds expected.
“Fast-moving wildfires will be possible as a result over Trinity, eastern Mendocino
and much of Lake County as gusts increase to 20 to 40 mph during the overnight hours,” the National Weather Service stated online. “Meanwhile, fuel dryness is more uncertain farther north across northern Humboldt into interior Del Norte County. However, decreasing humidity values and ongoing long-term drought support the potential for critical fire weather conditions
despite wetting rainfall occurring during the last week.”
In total, across the northern parts of the state, as many as 54,000 PG&E customers could be affected by the outages. To check the status of your home or business, go to https:// pgealerts.alerts.pge.com/ outages/map/.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain, who studies extreme events for multiple weather and climate organizations, noted the comparison with outages by PG&E in October 2019.
“The PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoffs this week won’t be nearly as widespread as 2019, but we are once again witnessing a very familiar set of autumn conditions: record antecedent warmth has led to exceptionally dry vegetation, (and) there’s still no rain on the horizon,” Swain tweeted Wednesday afternoon.