LAKEPORT, Calif. – Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s decision to cut off power to tens of thousands of residents across Northern California on Sunday and its continuing impacts as power was being restored was added to the Board of Supervisors’ agenda on Tuesday morning.
About 11,000 Lake County residents were impacted by the shutoff, which began Sunday evening, as Lake County News has reported.
Continued power outages in some areas led to school being canceled on Tuesday for Cobb Elementary School, while other districts that had closed on Monday were back in session, school officials said. Power was still being restored to areas of Kelseyville on Tuesday afternoon.
Supervisor Rob Brown asked for the discussion to be added as an extra item, which the board unanimously approved.
He prefaced his comments by saying that the county’s criticisms weren’t pointed out their PG&E representatives, Herman Hernandez and Brian Bottari, who were on hand to answer questions.
“The plan, or the lack of planning, that happened is just – we can’t allow this to continue in our community,” said Brown, noting the loss of money to local governments, schools and businesses, and the impacts on people with health concerns. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”
Bottari explained that this was the first event for the Public Safety Power Shutoff program. He said that, beginning this year state law requires a shutoff of power in conditions where a utility could spark a wildfire that could spread into a catastrophic event.
Separately, he said PG&E developed its own protocols for such an event, which it benchmarked through other utilities – most notably, San Diego Gas and Electric – and some companies in Australia. The program is part of PG&E’s larger Community Wildfire Safety Program.
Explaining the process
A few months ago, PG&E started communicating with local governments, community stakeholders and customers in Tier 3 wildfire areas, which are based on a map developed by the California Public Utilities Commission, Cal Fire and investor utilities that show the highest fire risk areas in the state, Bottari said.
He said PG&E communicated by letter and phone with customers to say the shutoff was coming, and that it was expected to happen once or twice a fire system.
Bottari said PG&E has a 24/7 Wildfire Safety Operations Center in San Francisco to monitor conditions.
He said it wasn’t just a red flag warning that triggered it the shutdown, but a number of other factors, including excessive wind speeds, low relative humidity and fuel moisture.
PG&E’s meteorologists also use the the Fosberg fire weather index to determine potential risk areas, Bottari said. The index, according to the US Forest Service, is a tool for “evaluating the potential influence of weather on a wildland fire based on temperature, relative humidity and wind speed.”
Bottari said PG&E had been monitoring the storm system for most of last week. Then, on Saturday morning, there was a shift and it appeared that there was a strong diablo wind event potentially coming into the service territory.
On Saturday afternoon, PG&E started its outreach to local governments regarding the likelihood that they would have to turn off power on Sunday night, Bottari said. Calls to customers went out on Saturday evening, followed by another notification to customers on Sunday morning.
At about 4:45 p.m. Sunday, Lake County News received notification from PG&E that the shutoff was set to occur, and just before 8:30 p.m. the shutoffs began in communities around Lake County, with the exception of Lucerne, Nice and Upper Lake. Limited areas of Lakeport were impacted, with the bulk of the outages reported in and around Kelseyville, Cobb, Clearlake and Middletown, according to PG&E’s outage map.
Bottari said that, beginning on Monday morning, PG&E used helicopters, vehicles and personnel on foot to inspect every inch of the transmission lines that had been deenergized. He said they didn’t want to turn the power back on if there were downed lines, because those could start fires.
He said there were more than 2,200 miles of power lines deenergized in the regional system,
and all of them had to be patrolled, inspected and tested before the power could be restored.
At the time of the Tuesday morning meeting, about 1,700 customers of the original 11,000 Lake County customers who had their power turned off were still waiting to be restored. Bottari said they were located around Loch Lomond and surrounding areas, and a few in Long Valley.
“This is the first time, obviously, we’ve done this,” he said.
Bottari said he’d conveyed to local officials ahead of the event that it might be “bumpy,” adding, “I think we’ve experienced that.”
He said that, to his knowledge, the power shutoff was the largest event of its kind in the state. “We’re all learning together. We’re going to tighten this up, particularly on the communication side.”
Bottari said PG&E wanted to meet with county officials, including the sheriff, for an after action report.
He said PG&E will do better next time, and he hoped there isn’t a next time. “This is the world we’re in right now.”
Board Chair Jim Steele asked about damage to equipment. Bottari acknowledged that there was some but he didn’t have specifics, explaining that the company is still documenting it.
Bottari said PG&E also is documenting how the weather ended up. As part of that, he reported that there was a wind gust on Mount St. Helena during the wind event that was 77 miles per hour.
During the discussion he said that San Diego had done some smaller power shutoffs to just over 90 customers in the backcountry, and last year shut it off to 17,000 customers during the Thomas fire.
Brown asked how many meters there are in Lake County. Bottari didn’t have an exact number, but said it’s in the high 20,000s. Brown concluded as a result that the shutoff left a third of the county’s residents out of power.
Bottari said the impacted areas are the Tier 3 risk areas as well as circuits that run through them.
“Which is bizarre to me,” Brown replied. “The entire town of Kelseyville was out except for the Brick Tavern. I’m just wondering how that worked out, but anyway. Not that I was there or anything, but I talked to people that were.”
Brown asked Bottari and Hernandez to convey to PG&E leadership that the county wasn’t happy how the situation rolled out.
He said the county’s sewer system has 75 sewer lift stations and only six generators, and they were moving them around like crazy to keep operations going. If lift stations go out, sewage goes into the lake, he said.
Something has to be done differently, Brown said. “There’s nothing to get used to here.”
Shutoff program part of a larger effort
Bottari told the board on Tuesday, “I want to make clear that the Public Safety Power Shutoff is a last resort. We’re not taking this lightly. We’ve a company full of folks who have spent careers trying to keep the lights on and this is not something we’re enjoying.”
He said the shutoff is part of a larger effort, the Community Wildfire Safety Program, which seeks to create a more resilient grid. It includes arborists and foresters clearing vegetation around lines, a goal of installing 200 new weather stations this year – 130 already are in place – plus another 200 next year, and grid hardening.
As they work to improve the power grid, Bottari said PG&E is looking at how to make the system more resilient, including replacing wood poles with steel, installing more coated conductors and considering undergrounding projects. They’re piloting a few of those undergrounding projects around the territory to see how efficiently and cheaply they can be done because cost is a big factor.
Sheriff Brian Martin said PG&E has been a great partner to the county during disasters, restoring power quickly. However, “This event was disappointing,” he said.
Martin said that if PG&E is going to cite state law that gives it the authority to turn off the power, the company also needed to recognize the state law that requires vegetation clearances. “Those are the proactive measures that our community needs,” he said.
He added, “This was a well-intentioned idea but it was very clearly poorly planned for and I think poorly executed.”
Martin said county officials couldn’t get consistent information, nor could he get definitive answers as a customer, with the company Web site telling him he wouldn’t be impacted but a separate phone call warning him his power was about to be turned off. It wasn’t.
PG&E has a database of medically fragile customers that emergency responders needed. Martin said that 36 minutes before the scheduled power outages, his office received the nondisclosure agreement from PG&E about those customers.
Supervisor Brown added that the county didn’t get the list of medically fragile customers until Monday morning, well after the shutoff was under way. “There was no time to react to this.”
“We should have got that in August,” Martin said of the list.
During the meeting, PG&E and county officials indicated an after action meeting could take place next month.
Shortly before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Lake County News received notification from PG&E that power had been restored to all customers impacted by the shutoff program. The company said it had restored about two-thirds of impacted customers by Monday night and the remainder on Tuesday.
PG&E also confirmed that it had repaired wind damage in the impacted areas.
Approximately 59,000 PG&E customers were ultimately impacted by the public safety power shut off, while PG&E initially had notified approximately 97,000 customers in advance of the possibility that power would be turned off.
Separately on Tuesday, the board adjourned into closed session to discuss a decision on whether to initiate litigation against PG&E due to last year’s Sulphur fire. Details about any reportable action out of the closed session weren’t available by the time of publication.
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.
Supervisors, sheriff discuss power shutoff with PG&E officials
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On