PG&E site still down with power shutoff underway

With PG&E's Public Safety Power Shutoff underway Wednesday morning, for the second straight day the utility's website is not accessible 
for customers to find out the latest information about the shutoff.

For most of Tuesday, PGE's website was down, and the utility had to post maps on Twitter of the affected portions of all 34 counties across the state that would be losing power. The site remained down as of shortly after 7 a.m. Wednesday.

PG&E spokeswoman Kristi Jourdan said their teams had doubled the database capacity on the website earlier this week in anticipation for 
increased traffic, but that there is seven or eight times the normal traffic on the site.

Jourdan said PG&E is continuing to work to increase server capacity and the number of customer requests the site can handle, as well as 
developing other ways to communicate outage information.

"Our teams are fully engaged and working on multiple fronts to address the issue as quickly as we can," she said.

According to PG&E, the shutoff is happening in three phases, with power having been shut off in the early morning hours Wednesday to 513,000 customers across 22 counties, including Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

Around noon, an additional 234,000 customers will lose power in the second phase of the shutoff, including those in Alameda, Contra Costa, 
San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

A third phase of the shutoff is still being considered for the southernmost part of PG&E's service range. 

The decision to turn off power was because of a forecast for dry, hot and windy weather, with peak winds reaching 60-70 mph at higher 
elevations, according to PG&E.