PG&E restores power to most customers
Utility PG&E has restored power to nearly all customers affected in the recent Oct. 26 and Oct. 29 shutoffs — with no additional outages planned for now.
By late Wednesday night, more than 1 million customers in Northern California had been restored to power since Saturday, leaving about 53,000 customers left in the dark.
About 312,000 customers were restored on Wednesday after the utility issued a weather “all-clear” for all counties except Kern, which is expected to be cleared sometime on Thursday morning.
PG&E will start up safety inspections again during daylight hours Thursday across Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Kern, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Sonoma and Yuba counties.
The number of customers affected in the Oct. 29 public safety power shutoff shrank significantly from the 540,000 that the utility first projected. In the Bay Area, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties were spared from the Oct. 29 shutoffs completely at the last minute, along with Humboldt and Siskiyou counties.
The Oct. 29 event marked PG&E’s fourth shutoff this month amid strong winds and fire danger across the region. Before Tuesday’s shutoffs kicked off, some 400,000 customers remained without power from Saturday’s event.
Restoration has been slowed in part by instances of weather-related damage to equipment, PG&E has said, which lengthens the inspecting and securing of lines. Since the Oct. 26 shutoff, the utility has identified at least 83 instances of weather-related damage to its equipment.
The list of counties that have been fully restored includes: Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Contra Costa, Fresno, Glenn, Humboldt, Madera, Mariposa, Monterey, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Siskiyou, Solano, Stanislaus, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yolo.