About 16,000 PG&E customers in San Francisco were still without power Sunday after mass power outage About a third of the city remained in the dark on Saturday, the utility company said.
In the Sunday morning update, PG&E said it restored power to 110,000 customers. By midday, service had been restored to about 4,000 more customers. Those without power were in the Presidio, the Richmond area, Golden Gate Park and smaller areas of the city's downtown area.
The utility company said a fire broke out at one of its substations, causing “significant and widespread” damage.
“Repair and safe restoration will be challenging,” PG&E said. “We have mobilized additional engineers and electricians.”
In a message issued at 2 p.m., PG&E said it expects all customers affected by the substation outage to receive power no later than 2 p.m. Monday.
“I have spoken with community leaders in these areas, and we are working to bring resources directly to these communities,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie. “We will continue to press PG&E to set a clear timeline for restoring full power.”
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Services said PG&E will create community resource center, along with city staff, for those without power ahead of the expected wave of heavy rain from atmospheric river. It will be open from 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm and will be located at 251 18th Avenue in the Richmond Entertainment Center. After Sunday it will be open from 8:00 to 22:00 daily.
Around 12:30 p.m., Lurie said he was in the Richmond area talking to residents and local businesses, and that there was a plan to work with small businesses to let them know they could file claims with PG&E.
“Some customers are starting to get power back as PG&E restores power to another 4,000 homes, but 17,000 customers are still without power. If you have a small business that has been harmed, you can file a claim at http://pge.com/claim“,” – said Lurie.
At the peak of the outage, about 130,000 customers were affected, according to the utility company.
Muni glitches
The power outage affected Muni service on the Market Street subway, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Muni Alerts.
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
Muni riders affected by service disruptions can ride BART for free between the Embarcadero and Civic Center, BART said.
“Speak to the station agent to be let in,” BART said.
Waymo suspends service
The self-driving technology company has suspended its robotaxi services due to a power outage.
On Sunday, the company announced it was resuming taxi services.
“Although Waymo Driver is designed to handle non-functional signals like four-way stops, the scale of the failures resulted in vehicles remaining stationary longer than normal to confirm the status of the affected intersections,” Waymo said. “This contributed to the snarling of traffic during the height of the traffic jams.”
