Community Corner
One Overnight Rain Wreaks Havoc on Bay Area Power Lines
Numerous problems reported throughout the area and power knocked out to thousands of households.
PG&E is working today to restore power to parts of San Jose, the East Bay and Monterey County after an overnight rainstorm caused mud to gather on power lines, triggering outages, utility officials said.
Two separate outages caused by downed lines knocked out power for 6,081 customers in San Jose this morning, PG&E spokeswoman Brittany McKannay said.
Wires came down at several locations in the city, including at Thornwood Drive and Blossom Hill Road, along San Tomas Aquino Road, causing a small fire, and on Fuller Avenue, McKannay said.
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All but about 1,000 customers had their power restored by about 11 a.m.
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More than 5,800 customers lost power in the East Bay early this morning, primarily in El Cerrito, Oakland and Richmond.
A tree branch hit a wire near 35th Avenue and Delaware Street in Oakland, causing a large outage there. All but about 50 customers had power restored as of about 11 a.m., McKannay said.
Wires also came down on Sierra Avenue in Richmond, disrupting power for that city and El Cerrito residents. Power was restored there by 10 a.m.
Another power failure affected 3,647 ratepayers in Vallejo at 4:43 a.m. and all but 55 customers had power restored by late this morning. Power was expected to be fully restored this afternoon, McKannay said.
About 4,300 people also lost power in Monterey County, including 1,300 in Gonzales, PG&E spokesman Denny Voyles said.
The rain turned dust, dirt and debris that collected over the summer on power wires and conductors into mud that disrupted the electrical current, tripping fuses and switches, Voyles said.
The rain in the South Bay has washed off some of the dirt from power lines but the downpours are not heavy enough to remove all of it, Voyles said.
Some of the outages can be corrected remotely through automatic equipment while others require work crews to drive to utility poles to restore the power, he said.
McKannay said that PG&E had extra repair crews on standby this morning, anticipating disruptions from the first storm of the fall season.
-Bay City News
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