LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Thousands of Lake County residents are still out of power due to a public safety power shutoff action taken on Sunday evening by Pacific Gas and Electric, with officials reporting that the situation is expected to be resolved as early as Monday night.
PG&E on Monday afternoon said it anticipated having power restored to approximately 70 percent of customers impacted by the power shutoff by midnight. Followup time estimates on the company’s outage map put full restoration as early as 9 p.m.
Early Monday evening, the county’s school districts all confirmed they would be open on Tuesday. Lake County International Charter School and the Lake County Office of Education's preschools, Hance and Creativity schools also will be back in session.
All but Lucerne and Upper Lake had been closed Monday because of being out of power, officials reported.
Kelseyville Unified posted updates on its Facebook page on Monday evening, noting that, because the power remained out, district officials couldn’t access the district’s mass notification system to send out notifications via email, phone or text messages.
The district said it will issue notifications if power isn’t restored by 6 a.m. Tuesday. Community members are urged to follow its Facebook page for updates.
The power shutoffs in Lake County and several other counties around the region were triggered by a red flag warning the National Weather Service issued this weekend, as Lake County News has reported.
PG&E said Monday that outages impacted approximately 60,000 PG&E customers in the North Bay and the Sierra foothills after it initially had notified 97,000 customers of the possibility that power would be turned off. However, conditions did not require all customers to be impacted.
Of those customers, 17,500 were in Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties, PG&E reported.
As of early afternoon Monday, PG&E said power remained out to approximately 11,300 customers in Lake County, in areas including Clearlake, Clearlake Oaks, Clearlake Park, Cobb, Finley, Hidden Valley Lake, Kelseyville, Lakeport, Lower Lake and Middletown.
By 6 p.m., the outages had been reduced to more than 3,100 customers in areas including Cobb, Kelseyville and Lower Lake, according to an outage map. PG&E anticipated having power back on to those residents by 9 p.m. Monday.
An outage impacting about 34 Clearlake Oaks residents which had began at about the time of the shutoff on Sunday night was still in effect Monday evening and expected to not be resolved until 9 p.m. Tuesday, PG&E said.
In Napa County, 5,700 customers were impacted in Angwin, Calistoga, Deer Park, Lake Berryessa, Napa, Pope Valley and Saint Helena, and 415 customers in the unincorporated northeastern areas of Sonoma County.
PG&E said its Wildfire Safety Operations Center and in-house meteorologists had been monitoring the weather for several days leading up the decision to turn off power for safety.
The company said it factors in whether the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning, humidity levels, projected sustained winds, temperature, condition of fuel on the ground and on-the-ground observations.
Overnight on Sunday, portions of the North Bay region experienced wind speeds over 60 miles per hour and wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour, the company reported.
In the Sierra, wind speeds were between 20 and 35 miles per hour, but with gusts of up to 55 miles per hour. PG&E said that at the Kirkwood area high in the Sierra, wind speeds were recorded at 96 miles per hour with gusts at 121 miles per hour.
The company said that, due to improved weather conditions, on Monday morning its crews began patrolling transmission lines by helicopter, vehicle and on foot to ensure there was no damage before turning the power on again.
Separately, Cal Fire reported that it has prepared for, and continues to prepare for, the potential of extreme fire weather across California for the remainder of this year.
“With such extreme fire danger conditions in many parts of the state, many areas are seeing electricity being turned off by their utility companies preemptively to help prevent new fires from sparking,” Cal Fire said in a Monday afternoon statement. “While we support precautions taken during these extreme weather conditions, please be aware that these measures are under the discretion, and only the discretion, of the utility companies. Cal Fire is not involved in the decision of when and where the power is turned off, or when the power will be turned back on when such conditions arise.”
Cal Fire said the only time it requests a power outage from a utility company is when there is an active wildfire that firefighters are fighting. “The power shut-off request will only be for within the fire area and this is to provide for the safety of firefighters within that area.”
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PG&E works to turn power back on; schools to reopen Tuesday
- Elizabeth Larson
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