RIO VISTA, Calif. — Just over 1,000 PG&E customers are without power Thursday night in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The public utility expects electricity to be restored by 2 a.m. Friday, but residents wonder when, not if, power will go out again.
"It's very frustrating, to say the least," said Chris Wakeman, owner of Downtown Rio Vista's Foster's Bighorn restaurant.
Wakeman was forced to close his 90-year-old business early due to an unplanned power outage Wednesday. The blackout, however, was not a normal one. People impacted say power went out, was restored, then went back out again. It's an issue longtime residents say they have dealt with for years, picking up in the last few weeks.
"Equipment has been harmed by it," said Wakeman. "Last year it was a $4,200 compressor... Loss of food when we had some bad power outages, so it seems to be getting progressively worse."
One community member recorded at least 14 outages in the past 10 days.
"Yesterday, we came outside — just the kids and us outside of our house — and it looks like doomsday," said Rio Vista resident Brittany Grenier-Nicolaidis. "There's nothing. It's dark."
The recurring darkness is also a catastrophe for goods and electronics inside Grenier-Nicolaidis's home.
"We lost about $300 worth of food in our freezer," said Grenier-Nicolaidis of a previous outage. "As the power goes out, how are we going to keep it from burning out our refrigerators and things like that?"
According to a PG&E spokesperson, Grenier-Nicolaidis's concern is a seasonal one.
"We certainly understand that concern," said PG&E spokesperson Paul Moreno. "This time of year, there's a lot of bird migration in the Delta, and birds have a habit of flying together in flocks and roosting on power lines and then flying off all together at once. When this happens, power lines will often sway and can come into contact with adjacent power lines and cause a fault."
Due to safety concerns, faults reported on power lines automatically trigger a circuit shut-off, leading to intermittent outages.
"That means the system has gone to the birds," reacted Wakeman. "I mean, we have to fix this."
PG&E says it's trying to fix the issue.
"We've done some work recently at the Grand Island substation to address the issues of flickering as well as some voltage conditions for the customers served by that so that improvement will be noticeable very soon," said Moreno. "Just this year, we replaced about three and a half miles of power lines along the Sacramento River...when we do that, we'll put more space in between the lines so as to minimize the chance of power lines coming into contact."
Tired of the twinkling lights, business owners in the Delta hope for a more noticeable change before the darkness becomes permanent.
"They've got to be able to find some solution to get this done so we're going to start a big push whether it's talking to the mayor, talking to the governor - whatever we need to do," said Wakeman. "You can't run a business like this. We've been in business 90 years. If we continue down this path, we're not going to make 91."
Watch from ABC10: Businesses, families prepare for Rio Vista Bridge closure
