An army of PG&E workers were dispatched early Wednesday morning to begin inspecting and restoring power to an estimated 172,000 customers in 22 counties â including more than 22,000 residents in Sonoma and Napa counties â where the utility shut off power beginning late Monday to prevent wildfires amid hot, dry conditions and winds of over 60 mph.
By Wednesday mid-afternoon, power had been restored to some 60,000 customers, PG&E officials said, with the goal of nearly full restoration across its vast service area later that night.
That included almost all of the 18,000 businesses and households that had gone dark in Sonoma County â mostly in and around Santa Rosa â and about 25% of the more than 5,000 customers impacted near Calistoga and St. Helena in Napa County, said PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian.
The rest of the Bay Area was untouched by this latest round of public safety power shutoffs. The other 20 counties include Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Humboldt, Kern, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yuba.
âWe want to reassure those customers who havenât been restored yet that all hands are on deck to turn them back on, safely and as quickly as possible. Our goal is to have essentially all customers restored by tonight,â Sarkissian said in an email.
The utility said power restoration may be delayed for some customers if crews find significant damage to lines from wind-blown tree branches and other debris, or if smoke from nearby wildfires prevents helicopters from making aerial line inspections.
At daybreak Wednesday, as potentially hazardous weather conditions subsided, more than 3,000 PG&E workers began the process of inspecting by ground and helicopter the roughly 10,750 miles of transmission and distribution lines in the impacted areas before starting to restore power.
The company has pledged to cut the length of its preemptive shutoff events by at least half â with the goal of restoring power within 12 hours after its meteorologists give the âall clearâ by increasing restoration crews, nearly doubling it surveillance helicopter fleet and making major infrastructure improvements.
âWe are trying to make these events smaller, shorter and smarter for our customers,â Sarkissian said.
Customers in the impacted areas were informed of the potential shutoffs about 48 hours before the lights starting going out Monday night and were also given an estimate of when power would be restored, Sarkissian said.
The effort to improve its performance comes after the utility faced intense criticism last fall following a series of preemptive outages that affected millions of customers throughout its service area, including a large swath of the Bay Area, some for days at a time.
At the time, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Marybel Batjer, president of the state Public Utilities Commission, excoriated PG&E and other for-profit utilities for the chaos and poor communication. Local emergency officials said they did not get timely information to relay to residents. The commission is continuing a nine-month investigation into the bungled blackouts
PG&E’s aging equipment has previously sparked some of the state’s largest wildfires, including the deadly 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of the town of Paradise and killed 85. The utility pleaded guilty in June to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter; one death was ruled a suicide. The utility paid $25.5 billion in settlements to cover the losses from power line-sparked catastrophes.
PG&E, though, is still warning Californians to expect preemptive power shutoffs for the long-term as the state grapples with hot and windy weather that is ideal for sparking wildfires triggered by failing equipment.
This story includes additional reporting from the Associated Press and Bay City News
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