PG&E Power Outage: Live Updates as Californians Confront Blackout – The New York Times, The New York Times

The second phase of the shutdown cut power to about 250, 000 more customers.

SAN FRANCISCO – Large areas of Northern California remained without power on Thursday as a major outage rocked the region for a second day. About 600, 000 electricity customers were affected on Thursday morning after the state’s largest utility carried out the second phase of its intentional power cut.

Pacific Gas and Electric said extreme winds overnight forced the additional shutdown, which the utility organized to prevent equipment from sparking fires.

The second phase affected bedroom communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and added to the hundreds of thousands of customers who had lost power on Wednesday. As of Thursday morning, the company had restored power to 137, 000 Customers .

A fire after midnight on Thursday in the town of Moraga, home to St. Mary’s Church Mary’s College, prompted evacuations and burned around 50 acres but was brought under control before dawn.

Pacific Gas and Electric says it will deploy a fleet of helicopters and more than 6, 000 technicians to inspect the lines before they are brought back on, a process that could take up to five days.

‘This isn’t the end of this’

When Ben Faus went to sleep Wednesday night at his home in the foothills above the Monterey Bay, he knew there was a chance his power would go out. About 3 a.m., when he was jolted awake because his electric sleep apnea breathing machine stopped working, he knew the blackout had arrived. “All of a sudden, I was like,‘ I can’t breathe, ’” he said.

Faus, 74, is a retired pharmacist who has lived with his wife in the Central Coast town of Aptos for three decades. On a cold and clear Thursday morning, they were among tens of thousands of residents in Santa Cruz County, as well as large metro areas in San Jose and Oakland, who woke up to a blackout as part of PG & E’s fire-precaution plan.

In a region where officials this week issued a red-flag fire warning for the Santa Cruz Mountains, Mr. Faus said he appreciated the effort to prevent sparks but the utility was not doing enough to keep residents informed of when and how long power would be turned off. “I can see the reason they’re gun-shy, but I think they’re overdoing it,” Faus said. “I almost feel like they’re trying to show people just how vital they are.”

Outside a Safeway grocery store just after dawn, dead traffic lights caused backups. Commuters toting travel mugs from homes without power begrudgingly got back into their cars without coffee when security guards informed them the store would open late.

While many residents said they had received emails or calls warning them that PG&E may cut power this week, most said they had trouble getting access to online maps and were unaware after a day of delays on Wednesday if the shut-off would actually happen.

Beth O’Shaughnessy and her family of four lost power at their Larkin Valley home with 13 horses, dogs and other pets around 11 pm on Wednesday night. Though the family has a generator for winter storms in the mountains, they had held off on stocking up food because of the uncertain timeline and long lines for fuel. “We weren’t sure if we would be able to get gas, so we didn’t want to get too much stuff,” she said. “One thing at a time, one meal. I’m kind of keeping that in the back of my head. ”

Gayle Clark, a 69 – year-old Air Force veteran, watched the commotion outside the grocery store with interest as he walked his brown Doberman. Mr. Clark, an electrical contractor who said he has worked for utilities elsewhere in the state, has for the past five months lived in a trailer with a generator after he was unable to find a landlord willing to accept a subsidized housing voucher. For as long as California’s fire problem endures, he expects similar scenes in the future. “This isn’t the end of this,” Clark said. “This is the beginning.”

Dear Reader:

I thought I would take a quick break from updating you on the blackout and offer some personal reflections on how my day is going. I’m in my home office eating instant ramen noodles because it’s fast and half of my kitchen appliances don’t work. There’s no power in my neighborhood – we are in the zone where PG&E cut power – so the generator is humming in the backyard, keeping the computer on and the meat in the fridge from rotting. Last night I was woken up at 2 a.m. by my neighbor who texted me to say the town was on fire, which was only a slight exaggeration.

I opened the front door of our one-story ranch house and flames were shooting up from the hills. I’ve been writing about the high risk of fires during this peak fire period in California – and here it was on my doorstep. My wife started packing up the passports and computer hard drives into a carry-on bag. There was a stream of cars barreling down pitch-black streets honking their horns and all heading in one direction, evacuating.

I got on my motorcycle and drove in the opposite direction, toward the fire, because I’m a reporter and that’s what we do. Ash fell on my helmet like snowflakes and smoke filled my nostrils. Firefighters, who arrived from all over the county in a couple dozen trucks, were battling flames on the steep hillsides above and between houses. The fire had grown to 50 acres. I stayed for an hour, talked to some firefighters and when I saw they were getting the blaze under control rode back to my house. I walked gingerly across the driveway in the dark. Did I mention that my neighbor spotted a four-foot rattlesnake under his garage two days ago and then lost track of it? I’m worried it’s slithering around somewhere.– Thomas Fuller

Answers to questions about PG & E’s decision to turn off power.

As hundreds of thousands of Northern Californians sat in the dark, many tried to understand why their utility decided to take such drastic action. Pacific Gas and Electric’s power shut-off safety measure has proved unusual in its scope, as California utilities typically take a more surgical approach to blackouts.

The utility has been found responsible for about two dozen wildfires and filed for bankruptcy protection in January. PG&E has said it could face up to $ 30 billion in liabilities for fires started by its equipment in recent years.

In response, PG&E described an act taken out of an abundance of caution in the interest of safety. For more answers to your questions about why PG&E decided to turn off power,read more hereby our energy reporter Ivan Penn.

Many in Northern California had harsh words for PG&E.

Citing a weather forecast ideal for wildfires andstaring down billions in potential liabilitiesfrom past blazes, PG&E decided sparks from its electrical equipment or a downed power line would pose a greater risk than grumbling customers.

But some residents and state officials felt the utility had overstepped.

State Senator Bill Dodd, a Democrat who represents northern counties of the Bay Area, said the situation was “beyond frustrating” in a statement on his website. “Public safety power shut-offs have a role to play when they’re needed to prevent massive wildfires,” he said. “However, many of my constituents are disturbed that the power was shut down before the winds started to pick up in the North Bay.”

“ Sadly, poor performance by PG&E is par for the course, so it’s not surprising, ”he added.

One police departmentpoked funat the utility’s less-than-ideal rollout, which included problems with its website and early maps that left some residents confused about whether they would be affected. The department, in Pleasanton, Calif., Posteda fake outage mapon Facebook, with the entire state scribbled out in red.

“Remain calm,” the post read. “Use your cellphone light to search frantically for the one flashlight you think you have in the house. It will be dead of course. Search for batteries. ”

Others did not appear to share their sense of humor. California Highway Patrol said that it was investigating a report that a PG&E vehicle had been shot at in Colusa County, north of Sacramento.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday that residents in the blackout areas had a right to be “outraged.”

But he stopped short of criticizing PG&E.

“This is industry best practice,” he said of the decision to cut electricity. “This is just at a scale that we haven’t seen.”

The governor, who was speaking with reporters, said the state needed to do everything it could to avoid a recurrence of last year Camp Fire, which killed 86 People.

There are still weeks left in fire season, he said.

“Remember, we are in the peak of it. ”