PG&E notifies thousands of possible power shutoffs

Pacific Gas & Electric is preparing for some possible planned power shutoffs, as early as Tuesday evening in six Bay Area counties and 17 counties in its service territory. Though the shutoff will affect about 22,000 of PG&Es 5.5 million electric customers, many of the customers we spoke with said they are tired of it.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, California - Pacific Gas & Electric is preparing for some possible planned power shutoffs, as early as Tuesday evening in six Bay Area counties and 17 counties in its service territory.

Though the shutoff will affect about 22,000 of PG&E's 5.5 million electric customers, many of the customers we spoke with said they are tired of it.

The public safety power shutoffs are possible from late Tuesday through early Thursday as officials monitor conditions, according to PG&E.

Recent rains have lowered some fire potential, but subsequent windy days have dried out vegetation and led to increased concerns.

Around the Bay Area, PG&E has notified nearly 5,000 customers in Solano County; about 4,600 in Napa County; about 2,450 in Alameda County; 1,240 in Contra Costa County; nearly 1,600 in Santa Clara County; and just over 1,900 in Sonoma County.

The duration of the shutoffs will depend on the weather, and not all customers will be affected for the entire period.

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning effective 11 a.m. Tuesday through Thursday morning for much of the Bay Area.

PG&E officials said they have been working with state and local election officials to prepare for Election Day.

No tabulation centers are within the possible shutoff areas, but there are five polling locations in three counties that could be affected, and PG&E is staging temporary generation at those sites.

"We're taking extraordinary measures to prevent outages at voting and tabulation centers, and pre-staging resources to quickly restore any service outages," said Mark Quinlan, PG&E Senior Vice President, Wildfire, Emergency and Operations.

Frisco is a 16-year-old blue Macaw who lives with two kitties in Rodie's Pet and Feed Supply just southeast of Clayton, near Diablo State Park, in a rural canyon area often involved in PG&E's increasing planned power shutoffs.

"Well, the discussion usually is mainly, who's gonna come and feed the animals and we have this storage facility which means the gate has to be open and then manually shut at nighttime, so people don't come in and bombard on peoples' private items in storage," said rancher and Rodie's staff member Raigen Vandiver. "Some of them have businesses that they have to access their equipment and be able to come in and go as they need. The outages span over a couple, three days. So, that's problematic. But also, the inconvenience to our customers. On a personal level, we have to make sure we don't lose our food in four different freezers at home," said Rodie's Pet and Feed Supply owner Bob Rodenburg.

On a similarly personal note, there is also this. "We also lose money because we're not coming in; we do paycheck to paycheck," said Vandiver, who lives on her family's large ranch with lots of animals. Besides losing the comforts of home in outages, ranch operations rely on electricity, water pumps for the animals and electric fencing.

In this day and age, one of the oldest forms of human transportation, horses, need a whole lot of electricity to give the animals what they need for their health and their safety.

On The Bit stable is a riding academy and boarding facility for horses. Especially with it getting dark earlier now, we can't have a light on, we can't have power for our heaters, for our wash rack for our horses are being washed.

Our washer dryer is not working. We do a lot of late lessons, and obviously we need our arena lit up. Though the direct inconvenience of the shutoff is obvious, worrying about them coming and the time it takes to restore power is pure frustration," said Kendall Farrow, a manager at On The Bit. "I live in the sticks pretty much, so I have to be prepared for that," said Vandiver.

To its credit, PG&E has sectioned its grid to have outages in smaller areas, affecting fewer customers and animals for shorter periods of time.

Customers can check online to see if their location is being monitored for the potential PSPS at www.pge.com/pspsupdates.

Bay City News contributed to this report.

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