San Jose mayor wants PG&E to prevent outages, blown transformers
San Jose Mayor Liccardo calls PG&E outages unacceptable, wants to hold utility accountable
San Jose residents say they are fed up with the recurring power outages that occurred during this week's heat wave. We spoke with Mayor Sam Liccardo who said the outages are unacceptable and plans to take action to hold PG&E accountable.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - One couple in San Jose's Evergreen neighborhood said the power went out twice Thursday afternoon.
The wife said he had to cancel a Zoom meeting for work. And the husband said having paid $500 to $700 a month year round for utilities,
PG&E needs to do better.
"It angers me. It angers everybody that I know, we're paying so much," said Carlos Arenas.
The mayor said he's heard complaints from many residents.
Despite no rolling blackouts so far this week, 118,000 customers still lost power.
Liccardo said the outages are primarily from blown transformers, putting public safety at risk.
"Three hospitals relying on backup generators," Liccardo said. "One of those hospitals had the generator fail in the middle of the hospital. No light, no air conditioning and they had to shut down part of the emergency room."
PG&E said it has taken an all hands-on deck approach to keeping power on and restoring it quickly.
In a written statement, it said, "We had more than 500 PG&E coworkers and contractors responding to outages caused by the heat, including line crews, tree crews and troublemen, a utility company’s first responders."
"The power was not on when we left the house today," Holly Chambers said there have been four outages at her Morgan Hill home in four days lasting 4 to 6 hours each time.
She said she has not been able to charge her electric car or open her garage door.
"You tell us it's not rolling power outages, but four days in a row of having our power go out when our lines are underground -should be reliable. But we're still suffering," said Chambers.
Liccardo said the city will be working with PG&E over the next few weeks to come up with a plan to make sure transformers are maintained on a regular basis.
"If we don't get there, we're going to go to the PUC and the courts to force PG&E to do what they should have done," said Liccardo.
"They need to get their act together. This should not be happening in this day and age," said Arenas.
Liccardo said he's spoken with PG&E's CEO.
He wanted PG&E to come up with what he calls a capital maintenance plan by the end of October.
Amber Lee is a reporter with KTVU. Email Amber at Amber.Lee@Fox.com or text/leave message at 510-599-3922. Follow her on Facebook @AmberKTVU, Instagram @AmberKTVU or Twitter @AmberKTVU