California storm knocks out power to whopping 1.4M customers

OAKLAND, Calif. - California's atmospheric river, which has been raging across the state off and on since last week, is now the largest single storm in 30 years, knocking out power to a whopping 1.4 million PG&E customers, the utility said Wednesday.

More than ¾ of the customers were restored within 12 hours, PG&E said in a news release. As of Wednesday night, approximately 15,000 customers still had no power. 

The high winds raging across the state wreaked havoc on PG&E power lines, toppling about 730 poles, requiring 5,000 crews to fix more than 2,000 spans of power lines.

"We will work around the clock until we bring the lights back on for everyone," the company said in a statement. 

The hardest hit areas in the Bay Area were the North Bay, which still had more than 9,000 customers without power on Wednesday night, and the South Bay, which had more than 3,000 customers still in the dark. 

Earlier this week, residents in San Jose's Willow Glen were lamenting their situation. 

"It has been rather difficult lately since we have been without power since about 3:30 p.m. on Sunday," Adam Martinez told KTVU on Tuesday.

He said it's been "rather tedious" trying to manage without heat and hot water.

His neighbor, Judy Kane, said she installed solar power and a powerwall for just this kind of event. But the outage has lasted so long, her backups have now failed as well.

"It is hard," she said. "It is hard." 

It's even harder for her parents.

Their house was so cold that her sister took them to Sunnyvale. 

For updates on PG&E outages, click here. 

KTVU's Mark Sayre contributed to this report.