More Lake County customers added to potential power shutoff area; several counties removed from scope
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Pacific Gas and Electric said Tuesday that it has added 3,000 more Lake County customer accounts to the area of a potential public safety power shutoff that is expected to start on Wednesday morning.
Based on PG&E’s latest report, issued mid-afternoon Tuesday, approximately 16,013 customer accounts are now included in the portion of Lake County that could be included in the shutoff area.
PG&E has not given specifics about where, exactly, those 3,000 additional customers are located in Lake County.
Communities that the company said will be impacted by a shutoff include Clearlake, Cobb, Hidden Valley Lake, Kelseyville, Lakeport (not including the city of Lakeport), Loch Lomond, Lower Lake and Middletown.
The number of Lake County’s medical baseline customer accounts in the proposed shutoff area has dropped from 2,010 to 900, PG&E said.
The Lake County Office of Emergency Services said that the newly added customers appear to be mostly in the Hidden Valley Lake area.
During an update to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday morning, PG&E Senior Public Safety Specialist Stewart Roth said the shutoff is anticipated to begin at around 7 a.m. Wednesday, with the weather event to last for 24 hours.
Roth said the all-clear is expected to be issued for Lake County at 8 a.m. Thursday, with PG&E to start immediate equipment inspections with a goal of restoring power within 24 hours of the all-clear.
At that time, Roth said the decision to go forward with the shutoff hadn’t been finalized.
Company spokeswoman Deanna Contreras told Lake County News shortly after 3:15 p.m. Tuesday that the final decision to go forward with the shutoff still hadn’t been made.
Overall shutoff area adjusted
On Tuesday PG&E also adjusted the overall footprint of the proposed shutoff, dialing the number of total counties back from 25 – the number given late Monday – to 16.
The updated list of impacted counties are Butte, El Dorado, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Solano, Sonoma, Tehama, Yolo and Yuba, PG&E said Tuesday afternoon.
The number of customer accounts expected to be impacted is now 181,000, down from the 303,000 PG&E previous had estimated.
The company said it has given the 24-hour notification of a potential shutoff to all of those customers.
The counties that have been removed from the proposed outage area are Alameda, Amador, Colusa, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Trinity.
PG&E said weather forecasts “continue to be dynamic with significant variation across different portions of PG&E’s service area.”
On Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for much of Lake County and several surrounding counties that is to be in effect from 4 a.m. Wednesday through 7 a.m. Thursday.
The high winds are forecast to continue through mid-morning Thursday.
The Lake County forecast continues to show the strongest winds occurring in and around the south county, with sustained winds of close to 25 miles per hour and gusts as high as 40 miles per hour.
While PG&E said it’s goal is to have power back on to most impacted customers by the end of the day Thursday, that process could be slowed if equipment damage is found during the inspections.
Five community resource centers to be opened in Lake County
Contreras reported that the company will open five community resource centers in Lake County to offer restrooms, device charging, bottled water and information, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. during the outage.
The centers in Lake County will be at the following locations:
– Clearlake Senior Community Center, 3245 Bowers Ave., Clearlake;
– Konocti Vista Casino, 2755 Mission Rancheria Road, Lakeport;
– Twin Pine Casino & Hotel, 22223 Highway 29, Middletown;
– Robinson Rancheria Resort and Casino, 1545 State Highway 20, Nice.
– Red Hills Property, 7130 Red Hills Road, Kelseyville.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.