Election Day Power Shutoff Possible In Contra Costa County

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA—Pacific Gas & Electric Co. notified some Contra Costa County customers of a proactive power shutoff starting Tuesday evening to reduce wildfire risk.

Overall, 22,000 PG&E customers in 17 counties and four tribal areas received advanced notification about the pending public safety power shutoff — PSPS — that would continue through Thursday morning.

As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, the affected customers in Contra Costa County were mainly south of Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, PG&E's website showed.

A red flag warning is in effect through Thursday morning in Contra Costa County and the greater Bay Area. During this time, the combination of strong winds and low humidity will cause fire to rapidly grow in size and intensity, the National Weather Service said. Regionally, the weather service forecasted 5-25 mph with gusts up to 50 mph.

"Although recent precipitation has lowered fire potential, fuel conditions have worsened over the last few days under dry and strong winds, leading to elevated fire weather concerns when winds begin strengthen this evening," PG&E officials said.

PG&E has some 1,600 field personnel focused on planning and pre-positioning resources for the anticipated event. Nearly 1,500 more are positioned in emergency operations centers around the service area to plan and respond to potential outages.

'No Election Day Impact'

To ensure voters can cast their ballots, PG&E is staging temporary generation at five polling places in three counties within the PSPS's scope.

No tabulation centers are currently within the scope.

"We know losing power is disruptive any day of the year, and especially on such an important day as today," said Mark Quinlan, PG&E senior vice president of Wildfire, Emergency and Operations. "We’ve been preparing for Election Day for over a month. We’re taking extraordinary measures to prevent outages at voting and tabulation centers, and pre-staging resources to quickly restore any service outages. Free and fair elections are a hallmark of our democracy, and we’re ready and proud to do our part to ensure that happens."

Potentially Affected Customers, Counties

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

Here are the potentially impacted Bay Area counties and the number of affected customers within each county:

• Alameda County: 2,441 customers, 112 Medical Baseline customers
• Contra Costa County: 1,240 customers, 65 Medical Baseline customers
• Napa County: 4,638 customers, 205 Medical Baseline customers
• Santa Clara County: 1,593 customers, 89 Medical Baseline customers
• Solano County: 4,933 customers, 430 Medical Baseline customers
• Sonoma County: 1,902 customers, 60 Medical Baseline customers

Here are the other impacted counties in Northern and Central California:

• Butte County: 443 customers, 38 Medical Baseline customers
• Colusa County: 607 customers, 29 Medical Baseline customers
• Glenn County: 507 customers, 21 Medical Baseline customers
• Kern County: 586 customers, 28 Medical Baseline customers
• Lake County: 1,168 customers, 84 Medical Baseline customers
• Mendocino County: 13 customers, 4 Medical Baseline customers
• Plumas County: 1 customer, 0 Medical Baseline customers
• Santa Cruz County: 325 customers,16 Medical Baseline customers
• Stanislaus County: 28 customers, 0 Medical Baseline customers
• Tehama County: 1,073 customers, 101 Medical Baseline customers
• Yolo County: 434 customers, 21 Medical Baseline customers

Community Resource Centers

The community resource centers in Contra Costa County are at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Walnut Creek; Clayton Community Church in Clayton; and Costco in Danville.

The centers provide:

—A safe location to meet their basic power needs, such as charging medical equipment and electronic devices such as phones and laptops;

—Up-to-date information about the PSPS; and

— Water, snacks, blankets, ADA-accessible restrooms and other essential items to reduce hardships to our customers.

The centers' hours of operation are Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., and Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. A complete list of available CRCs is on pge.com.