PG&E’s planned Public Safety Power Shutoff, which was expected to impact hundreds of thousands of people across the Bay Area around noon on Wednesday, has been delayed until 8 p.m. in some areas, according to government agencies in the East Bay.
Several Contra Costa County cities and towns have issued statements indicating PG&E officials have delayed the power outage for about eight hours due to weather conditions, since the anticipated high winds that prompted the National Weather Service to issue a Red Flag Warning have not yet occurred.
The Contra Costa County Fire Protection District confirmed that information, adding that fire danger remains high and urging area residents to be “ultra cautious in ALL outdoor activities & report any fires to 911 immediately.”
Parts of Bay Point, Canyon, El Sobrante, Kensington, Lafayette, Moraga, North Concord, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, Pinole, Pittsburg, Richmond, San Ramon and Walnut Creek are all expected to be impacted.
Rossmoor, Danville and Clayton should be spared. The Bay Point Health Center will close, but the Contra Costa Regional Medical Center and other county-operated medical facilities will remain open.
47 comments
Unfortunate for employers who shutdown and told employees not to come to work today. Lost wages for employees and lost income for businesses that were expecting no power.
This has been a complete joke! I work in Orinda. Our office has been on alert since Tuesday and today I went into the office because the shutoff in Orinda was delayed until between 10-12noon today. At 10am we get an alert saying it was in the process of, or already shut down where we are at Theatre Square. Yet the power remained on. We waited until around 11:30 when we finally started powering down our computers and our servers for the second time. It has been a complete disruption for us for the last 2 days. Now it’s delayed until 8pm. There’s going to be A LOT of pissed off people and companies over this.
The shut down won’t prevent fires. It will prevent it from being PGE’s fault. It’s a CYA maneuver by PGE.
Suz, and the unfortunate part is, nothing will be done about it. We can get pissed off, we can be inconvenienced, and yet we’re all slaves to PG&E. That’s the most frustrating aspect of this whole thing.
PG&E, you’re fired! Your incompetent ways of running the business are so damn disruptive. How about an immediate 50% drop in pay for management until you get you sh*t together?
Here, here! We should all not pay our bills in protest. I know, wishful thinking.
no service= NO PAY
deduct it from your bill next month
You know you only pay for the electricity you actually use, right? But by all means, go ahead and withhold money from your PG&E bill. But be prepared to go without power for an even longer period.
If they couldn’t be sued the power would be on.
Good point Randy!
Maybe PG&E is trying to teach us a lesson ….
Giving us a choice to either hold them blameless or sit in the dark.
PG&E has no idea what they are doing. I agree let’s fire them.
This is a way for pg&e to pressure to get funding for infrastructure repair that we already paid for!!! Utilities should not be privatized.
Hear, hear.
Didn’t a Governor (see Gray Davis) lose his job because he couldn’t keep the lights on? I’m not saying that Newsom should suffer the same fate however I am saying that the upper echelon of PG&E should be held accountable by the loss of their high paying jobs.
Exactly!
Maybe it’s a PG&E scheme to get the public so mad that the state seizes them and then breaks it up into local utilities thus washing the current PG&E management hands of the mess.
Heads should roll from the top tier at PG&E. No accountability. Massive F-up and yet…nothing. No consequences. BS.
Employer just called Daughter telling her not to come to work again tomorrow.
Ripple effect from lost income will be felt, when people don’t have disposable income available to spend. An those just surviving paycheck to paycheck will be hardest hit.
Everyone needs to stay calm and realize that this is nothing more than a social experiment/economic booster via our government. What is the first thing people did without thinking…. put a run on ice, water, gasoline etc. sheer panic ! What happened after yesterday’s panic?? Welll, per the “government agencies “ this so called planned public safety power shutoff has been delayed. Here’s a fun fact… Marin County was told the reason for this shout down was for maintenance contra costa county was told it was for high winds. If you going to lie to the public, be consistent.
Last year PG&E sent out a red flag warning to residents in a dangerous area last year and the public just like today had a meltdown. PG&E listened to their customers and left he power on instead. That night the Camp Fire started, 85 people lost their lives and 16.5 Billion dollars in damage resulted. It was directly connected to PG&E’s equipment.
Now we are again exposed to those same dry conditions and high winds. PG&E again decided to turn the power off and everyone loses their minds again. Have we really learned nothing??
Yes PG&E’s failing equipment are to blame, but some of that aging equipment is from old power companies they purchased in order to keep power to those parts of the state. They do not have the manpower and money to retrofit all that aging equipment.
Other states have to deal with hurricane evacuations or tornado warnings, etc. Unfortunately this will be our new normal until we can upgrade our infrastructure (move the electric lines underground).
Honestly the real travesty is the people who require electricity for health reasons, but the rest of you could probably use some time disconnected from the grid. It won’t kill you whereas a mega fire could.
Stop being rational. PG&E ain’t perfect, but I don’t blame them one bit.
Their new slogan should be…
Always expect the worst and you will never be disappointed.
Would there be a Power outage everywhere in Concord or in some neighborhoods???
In addition to business interruptions for both myself and my husband Jim, I had to reschedule 2 personal appointments in case of power outage: my monthly haircut, and a colonoscopy.
The later I would have preferred to have done on Friday, just to get it done. But didn’t want to prep for this in a bathroom with an oil lantern or flashlight for light. 🙁 Not safe.
No siree Bob! Wise choice! That would be a real drag w/o running water, too.
Gross, way too much info, including your husband’s name…file this under “No One Cares”.
So they couldn’t accurately forecast weather conditions in a small area in a narrow time range but they want us to believe they could accurately forecast global climate change and it’s effect. Yeah, sure.
Hmmm, can’t get informational webpages on outages to work, seems they have problems getting a handle on transmission line maintenance and now difficulty on weather prognostication.
Yet seem to mange, without a hitch, turning off power if bill isn’t paid in timely manner.
These guys seem to be able to do weather and they manage to do it for ten days, for cities al over CA.
https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/ca/concord/KCACONCO78
Yes climate does change.
Of course the rich cities will be “spared” from the outages. This is ridiculous!
And we thought Terrorist would attack our power grid.
Clayton is a rich city?
So I’m reading about lost wages .. I agree! How do they account for not just businesses but the average person just trying to make ends meet.
Now when we don’t work we don’t get paid but come hell or no electricity PG&E will sure want there money or they’ll TURN IT OFF .. no matter what we’re all F****** and PG&E pulls the strings but WAIT it’s not the employees we gotta remember that they are doing there Job… it’s the governor and the higher ups with all the $$ THATS WHAT WE HAVE TO REMEMBER
SO PLEASE DONT TAKE IT OUT ON THE WORKERS and no I’m not an empty I just know it’s wrong 💞
Hopefully now some of you may realize what it means to live in a one party
state. THINK BEFORE YOU VOTE!!!!!!
One party? Google “partisan map of california”.
It’s 8:08, did your power go out?
Having had received an email from CCC emergency service that my lights would go off at 8 pm. It is now 9:34 am and so far no outage.
I heard on KKDV. Concord radio station 92.1, that it’s now changed to 11pm due to no predicted winds in CC County
O great, now they changed the time.
Sorry, Papa, but your argument abt aging PG&E God bless their souls for buying aging utilities to keep the power on absolutely infuriates me. They are not a charity. They have acted in a manner that has done nothing less than cause catastrophe upon itself driven by greed and cronyism and I’m sick of it and of paying for trot mistakes.
Sorry, Papa, but your argument abt aging PG&E God bless their souls for buying aging utilities to keep the power on absolutely infuriates me. They are not a charity. They have acted in a manner that has done nothing less than cause catastrophe upon itself driven by greed and cronyism and I’m sick of it and of paying for their mistakes and leadership if you can even call it that. Their mea culpa on TV is insulting to our intelligence. How is it that we know what should have already been done?
Yes, Nokeem. The money pigs have been stuffing their pockets since well before the San Bruno fire. No upgrades, bare repairs, lots of raises for the owners and cronies. The 23 that sat on the grand jury know the truth of this. No responsibility. At. All.
Pretty much the same all over Concord…I mean California. You know the drill.
Get ready for the state to take over PG&E, and call it CalPow, to provide
the most expensive energy in the country. PG&E is about done as their stock went from $70 to about $11, and the reason they are doing the shutoffs is a lifesaving maneuver financially. They absolutely cannot see another lawsuit
against them. The Ca PUC is amazingly quiet about this issue.
Just a matter of time.
Stock is down to $7.70 this morning. A PG&E employee was shot at near Maxwell and the CHP is investigating it. The Oroville office was closed due to vandalism. Don’t take it out on the everyday employees – they have families, too.
Hold senior management’s feet to the fire for their lack of concern….. while they collect their outrageous salaries.
Remember Geisha Williams ? In January 2019 she left PG&E as the company struggled to deal with legal and financial repercussions associated with a series of devastating California wildfires, which occurred in 2017 and 2018. She took a multimillion-dollar severance package with her.
Being the CEO as well as President of the company, she had an estimated salary of around $8,500,000 in 2017.
Then PG&E hired Bill Johnson, whose experience seems to be limited to pulling down $$$$$$$$. He remained the Chairman, President, and CEO of Progress Energy until the company was bought by Duke Energy in 2012. Per the merger agreement between Progress and Duke, he was slated to become CEO of the new combined company. Within an hour after the merger closed, he was removed as CEO by the new board, the majority of whom were legacy Duke Energy board members.The Los Angeles Times estimates Johnson walked away with $44 million as severance.
Amid some controversy, Bill Johnson announced plans to retire in November 2018 after six-years of service. At their February 2019 meeting, the TVA Board of Directors announced their selection of Jeffrey Lyash to replace Johnson, effective April 2019. Lyash comes to TVA from Ontario Power Generation Inc. (OPG).
On April 3rd 2019 he was announced as the new President and CEO of PG&E. Amid Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s bankruptcy and wildfire safety woes, the utility’s incoming chief executive officer Bill Johnson will receive an annual base salary of $2.5 million for a three-year contract, the company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday.
That’s more than twice the base salary of former CEO Geisha Williams.
Johnson also got a one-time transition payment of $3 million on his first day on the job, as well as an annual equity award of about $3.5 million, the filing said. He started May 1, replacing interim CEO John Simon.
All that information is public knowledge. And you can thank the PG&E Board of Directors for that…. and probably the CPUC…. and the California legislature that implemented the inverse condemnation laws and limited proactive forestry management.
Glad I sold my stock when I did when they eliminated the dividends, knowing the management was not looking out for the customers and employees. Too bad my kids still live in California.
I don’t see any improvement until the entire political landscape has changed. And I don’t expect it to change for the better – certainly not if PG&E is taken over by the state.
Have fun……. You’re screwed. PG&E is screwed.
Power out in south PH 10:55 PM. Hurricane lanterns on for lighting. Going to do a crossword puzzle and go to sleep. Prepared for this so not worried.
I’m currently in Zurich, Reading the news from ca. You would think there is goi g to be a zombie apocalypse….
No power outage here in Concord yet.
maybe if Sacramento hadn’t stopped forest management back in the 70’s we wouldn’t have the severe fire hazard that we have today
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