SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Thousands of Northern California utility customers will go to bed for another night without power, as crews race to restore electricity.
Wide-spread damages Tuesday from a heavy wind, rain, and snowstorm that blew through the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valley’s and the Sierra brought down powerlines, uprooted trees, caused flooding, and spread debris across the region.
Gary Nagaye, 79, lives in Land Park and was without power for nearly three nights. The SMUD customer had his power restored around 6 p.m. on Thursday.
“Take a shower and then go to bed, that’s about it. I can’t do much because of the [electricity] being out and we don’t have any lights, so…we use a lot of lanterns,” Nagaye said.
He’s live in his Land Park home for 49 years and said this is the longest outage he has ever experienced here.
SMUD gave ABC10 the following statement on the progress they’ve made to restore power around the area:
“SMUD crews have worked around the clock to restore power after near hurricane-force winds cut power to more than 220,000 customers. Our crews are continuing to repair damage and restore power to the remaining 3,493 [at 9:07 p.m.] customers as quickly as possible. We sincerely appreciate our customers’ patience and know power outages are challenging, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re working directly with our customers impacted by prolonged outages to support them.
Although we haven’t received any customer calls, we learned of three customers who received automated messages that their power was restored when it wasn’t. These customers were part of multiple outages and the outages that were restored generated automated messages. We sincerely regret the inconvenience and have fixed the issue.”
Meanwhile, crews with the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) have restored power to more than 90% of its customers who lost power during the winter storm. Still, company officials said there are about 53,000 customers in the dark, Thursday night.
The majority of the repair crews are focusing on the areas that were hardest hit by the storm: Yolo County, Stockton area, the North Coast, Mendocino, and Humboldt County. There is no ETA on when power will be fully restored.
PG&E has asked for mutual aid from other west coast utility companies. They currently have 25 mutual aid crews helping out with another eight expected to join soon, the company said.
