Several Thousand Remain Without Power In Contra Costa County

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — Several thousand Contra Costa County residents were still without power Wednesday morning due to weather-related power outages that started Tuesday.

The county is among the six highest-impacted counties in PG&E's service area and there were still 129 separate outages Wednesday in the county that needed assessment, PG&E said on a Storm Updates webpage.

As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, there were 22,965 Contra Costa County customers without power and 49,272 whose power had been restored. Areas still impacted by outages Wednesday included parts of Walnut Creek, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Moraga, along with areas in East County.

Concord City Hall was closed Wednesday morning because of a storm-related power outage. Officials say while workers try restoring power to the city buildings at 1950 Parkside Drive, phone lines are also down. However, Concord recreation facilities were open.

Heavy rain and intense gusts led to downed trees and wires in every part of the Bay Area. Winds of 77 mph were clocked Tuesday at San Francisco International Airport; 97 mph in the Santa Cruz Mountains; 93 mph along Mines Road in the East Bay; and 71 mph in the Las Trampas and Oakland hills.

According to PG&E, based on similar storms, it is projected that approximately 80 percent of the original outages in Contra Costa County would be fixed by the end of Wednesday. Urban and suburban areas are generally energized faster due to more power routing options.

Here are the highest-impacted counties and the number of affected customers as of 3 p.m. Tuesday:

Alameda 35,656

Contra Costa 72,237

Monterey 19,846

Santa Clara 129,806

San Mateo 64,007

Santa Cruz 5,727

PG&E crews worked through the night and cut the number of customers without power in the Bay Area nearly in half the past 24 hours.

At 4 a.m. Wednesday, there were 167, 293 customers without power, according to company officials.

In the wake of the major storm that just pummeled the region, that total was down from 260,000 as of 6 p.m. Tuesday and from about 361,000 as of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to a news release from PG&E.

This is a developing story; refresh the page for the latest updates. Bay City News Service contributed to this report.