Atmospheric River: Power Restored To Majority of Residents; PG&E Blames Downed Trees For Massive Outages
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced Monday morning that it had restored power to the majority of customers who lost power during the storm the day before.
As of around 2:20 p.m. Monday, PG&E reported that 38,708 customers across the Bay Area were without power -- down from 380,000 customers during the worst of the atmospheric river Sunday afternoon. According to PG&E officials, the hardest hit area as of Monday was the peninsula, with about 15,901 customers without power. In the North Bay, there are about
11,864 customers in Marin, Napa and Sonoma Counties experiencing a power outage. The South Bay has approximately 5,836 customers impacted, while 3,273 in the East Bay and 1,834 in San Francisco didn't have power.
There also was an additional new power outage reported in East Santa Rosa by the Santa Rosa Fire Department Monday afternoon at around 4:42 p.m.
The outage was reported shortly after 4 p.m., fire officials said. Residents were reminded to treat all uncontrolled intersections as 4-way stops.
PG&E said a majority of the outages were caused by downed trees or large tree limbs striking electric equipment throughout our service area. Crews and contractors were "working around the clock" to replace broken power poles, downed power lines and damaged transformers, according to PG&E officials.
"In some areas, we are facing access issues due to flooding or fallen vegetation," said North Bay PG&E spokesperson Deanna Contreras. "PG&E crews will enter these areas when it is safe to do so and are working closely with first responders throughout our service area to make these areas safe and restore power safely and as quickly as possible to all impacted customers."
READ MORE: Nearly 90,000 Affected by Widespread Bay Area Outages
The storm is tied as the third strongest since 1950 on the Bay Area Storm Index (BASI), the strongest in 26 years, according to Jan Null, a consulting meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services.
During the height of the storm, with hundreds of thousands of customers losing power, PG&E had 3,000 workers out in the field repairing broken equipment.
PG&E customers still without power Monday can visit the utility's website for updates.
