Power restored to much of San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO - Power remained out for roughly 3,800 homes and businesses in San Francisco on Monday morning following a massive outage that darkened the city, caused food to rot and Waymo cars to stall without traffic lights over the weekend. 

Crews scrambled on Monday morning to restore power to 6,000 customers, and Pacific Gas & Electric said electricity had been restored to about 9,000 customers since Saturday night. Still, the blackout continued to affect the area around the Civic Center, prompting the closure of several city buildings on Monday, including City Hall, the main library and the Civic Center garage. 

‘Significant damage’

The utility had originally expected power to be restored to the remaining customers by 2 p.m. Monday. But at a news conference, PG&E COO Sumeet Singh said there had been "significant damage" to the system, and some customers may be without power for longer than that.

He also acknowledged that several alerts to customers about power restoration have been inaccurate.

"I certainly appreciate the emotion and the lived experience," Sing said, promising to "do right" by businesses that lost money and customers just days before Christmas. "We're going to do right by our customers and leave no customers behind." 

PG&E later said power would be restored to the remaining affected customers by 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

The outages affected about one-third of the city on Saturday — at its peak about 125,000 customers — disrupting transit and traffic across San Francisco, with some BART trains unable to run through city stations, Waymo suspending its services and traffic backing up as streetlights went dark.

Timeline of the outage

PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a Mission Street substation.

Singh outlined a timeline of what happened, including the initial fire Saturday shortly after 1 p.m.

The peak of the outage came about three hours later at 4 p.m., Singh said, when the power shutdown because PG&E had to "de-energize" the system to make it safe for firefighters, before utility crews could restore power. 

He said the equipment inside the burned substation is "extensive." One of those key pieces of equipment was the critical circuit breaker, which is the mechanism that protects a circuit from damage by interrupting current flow during a fire, Singh said. 

Cause of fire under investigation

As for why the fire broke out?

Singh said that is the key question.

"We do not know yet the root cause of the fire," Singh said. 

PG&E officials said that preventative maintenance was completed in October at the substation involved, and another inspection on Dec. 5. 

Singh vowed that a third-party engineering firm, Exponent, which the utility hired, is being tasked to figure this out.

"We ensure this will never happen again," Singh said. 

Rotten food, no power

The prolonged outage forced restaurants to discard spoiled food and left residents without electricity for much of the weekend.

Mayor Daniel Lurie was frustrated. 

He told reporters over the weekend that PG&E had to "do better" and that he would be having discussions with the utility in the "coming days." 

"It’s been a lot of changing information, that’s been the toughest," said David Chein, owner of Sushi Bistro. 

Chein said he would have moved food earlier if he had known power would be out as long as PG&E later indicated. Despite using ice chests and other cooling methods, he said much of his product would be lost.

Residents also described the challenges of being without power. 

"I’ve gone out to other friends’ houses that have power so I can charge my phone and devices," said Leslie Ramirez. "It’s just been really dark at my place."

PG&E offers bill credit

On Monday evening, PG&E announced its resident customers would automatically receive a $200 bill credit, while commercial customers would get an approximately $2,500 credit.

The utility said customers would not have to apply for the credit, and it would instead appear automatically on bills as "Customer Satisfaction Adjustment." Customers were also advised that they can also pursue a separate claims process for extended outages.

"We recognize the significant impact this outage had on our customers, and we are committed to providing immediate and meaningful support," said Vincent Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer. "We are making this as fast and easy as possible for our customers. The credits are one way we are working to restore trust and ensure our customers receive the assistance they deserve."

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