Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is preparing for a severe El Niño winter and has warned that power in some rural communities could be out for 24 to 48 hours after storms, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. CBS News Bay Area reported that the utility has assembled a task force to analyze flooding, landslide and soil-movement risks.
Why it matters: Mark Van Gorder, a PG&E government-relations representative, told American Canyon’s City Council late last month that “power could be off” and that in some rural areas restoration “could be 24 hours, it might 48,” the Chronicle reported. He flagged Marin County and the northern Napa Valley as places where storms have downed wires, and said American Canyon, home to a regional service center, was less likely to see a prolonged outage.
Angie Gibson, PG&E’s vice president of emergency preparedness and response, told the Chronicle the company works with meteorologists to forecast storm impacts four to 10 days out and, within 96 hours of a forecasted storm, estimates outages, crew needs and which customers to contact. CBS quoted Gibson saying that 96-hour warning “allows us to identify those high-risk areas and proactively mobilize resources and material.” CBS also said PG&E has installed cameras in reservoirs and watersheds to help detect debris flows, plans rain gauges in wildfire burn scars, and monitors conditions with 1,650 weather stations.
Marcus Hernandez, Cal Fire’s Santa Clara unit chief, said at a Tuesday briefing hosted by PG&E that cumulative rainfall matters as much as a single storm, because saturated ground can let even moderate wind take down trees and lines, the Chronicle reported. The paper said atmospheric-river storms in early 2024 knocked out power to 235,000 PG&E customers, and that winds and rain last Christmas left 150,000 customers without power for hours.