KEY POINTS
- A record-breaking 468,000 customers lost power due to a system-wide outage on Tuesday
- 18,500 people are still in the dark
- Power supply in Los Altos will resume only by Saturday
Empty restaurants, gridlock traffic, non-functional ATMs and thousands of residences without power. This was how life looked like for people in San Francisco Bay Area since Tuesday’s atmospheric river.
California electric utility and natural gas provider PG&E said a record-breaking 468,000 customers lost power due to a system-wide outage Tuesday, a situation that hadn’t occurred since 1995.
The company managed to restore power for all customers in North Bay’s Napa and Marin counties by Thursday afternoon and announced that crews were sent to support repair work in the South Bay, where power restoration might take days, ABC7 reported. Customers in Los Altos were informed that power would return to their homes only by Saturday.
Eleven atmospheric river events affected California this year. An atmospheric river storm impacted Northern California on Monday and moved to Central and Southern California on Tuesday. Since the past weekend, about 30 million people across the state were also under flood alerts.
“We weren’t expecting it to be as bad as we’re seeing it,” Monterey Mayor Tyller Williamson told CNN on Monday.
Parts of the state were already reeling from powerful snowfall and rain storms, coupled with hurricane-force winds, prompting the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center to issue a Level 4 warning of excessive rainfall in the area on March 10. At least two people died after storms inundated the state and nearly 10,000 residents were ordered to evacuate.
When will power supply resume?
Aaron Johnson, PG&E’s vice president of Bay Area region said crews were working to restore power to every customer safely and quickly, adding that power supply resumed in 93% of homes. More than 430 crews are working round the clock to restore power for the remaining customers.
The company, in another update, said at least 18,500 customers continue to remain without power, primarily in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Restaurant owners seemed to be the worst affected.
“It’s been like hell actually,” Manish Tyagi, the owner of Aurum restaurant in Los Altos, told KTVU. “If there is no internet, no power, you’re actually doing nothing. You’re not doing any business. I have a family of four – two kids and having a family of 15 people here [at the restaurant]. They are completely dependent on us.”
Jan Unlu, the owner of Caff La Scala, told ABC7 that the projected food and business loss these days will cost him $34,000. Vickie Breslin, who owns The Post restaurant, said she rented a 28-foot refrigerator truck a day after her business lost power.
“We temperature-checked everything and got it in and started asking our neighbors if they needed to store anything too,” she noted. “I can cry about this or we can turn it into something positive for the community and for everybody around because you know what else are you going to do.”
Apart from businesses, residents dependent on electricity for survival and their day-to-day needs have been hit hard by the power outage.
“We don’t have refrigeration, we don’t have stoves, no heat,” Los Altos resident Fran Vella said, adding that her husband, who depends on a walker, hasn’t been able to leave the second floor of their home as the elevator needs power to function. “It’s amazing how much you miss power when you realize you don’t have it.”
