At today’s peak, over 155,000 PG&E account holders in the SF Bay Area were without power.
Much like modern-day pop-music releases: the atmospheric river that descended on San Francisco early Tuesday was a tad bit overhyped — but better safe than sorry. Promised all-day rain spells evolved into spats of wetness in SF, though forecasted wind gusts did pummel the city and elsewhere in the Bay Area. (A downed tree in Burlingame caused massive traffic delays after it blocked traffic on El Camino Real.)
From @sanmateoco: SMC Alert: High winds causing trees to fall and block roads/freeways. Power outages causing signals to fail. Treat non-functional signals as all way stops. pic.twitter.com/YeKRapmomM
— CAL FIRE CZU (@CALFIRECZU) March 14, 2023
As a result, PG&E’s woefully antiquated utility equipment flailed, fell, and failed after experiencing those wind speeds. The contentious utility company’s outage map still showed swaths of the SF Bay Area experiencing power outages around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 14th; most of these were clustered in the East Bay, with some zip codes having 5,000-plus account holders without power; in San Francisco, the vast majority of outages were concentrated in SoMa, Bayview, and the Mission District.
Amid the outages, many of which have been caused by trees falling on above-ground powerlines, PG&E tweeted out a lil’ safety PSA about how to react when coming across a downed powerline. Spoiler alert: Use common fucking sense and don’t surrender to Darwinian impulses.
SAFETY: Downed trees/branches/snow could be hiding a power line. Assume all wires are energized and extremely dangerous. Don't touch or try to move it—keep children and animals away. Report downed lines to 911 and PG&E at 1-800-743-5002. https://t.co/fDUxnshHhU pic.twitter.com/x5ahzPzjio
— Pacific Gas & Electric (@PGE4Me) March 14, 2023
“Downed trees/branches/snow could be hiding a power line. Assume all wires are energized and extremely dangerous,” reads the tweet. “Don’t touch or try to move it—keep children and animals away. Report downed lines to 911 and PG&E at 1-800-743-5002.”
PG&E outages are notorious for taking far longer than the one to two hours the utility says they typically last; anecdotal reports on Twitter are describing some account holders lost power earlier this morning… and are still without electricity.
Let this be a reminder to us all that PG&E’s dangerous incompetence is reason enough to invest in a high-quality battery bank.
Feature image: Screenshot via PG&E
