Nearly 5,000 lose power: What we know about PG&E’s Santa Cruz, San Lorenzo Valley outages
Quick Take
The first outage began at approximately 8:31 p.m. Wednesday when Ben Lomond area residents lost power that wasn’t restored until midday Thursday because of a fallen tree into electrical equipment, according to PG&E. That outage at its peak affected 2,194 customers.
Nearly 5,000 PG&E customers in the San Lorenzo Valley and Santa Cruz lost power for an extended period over the past 24 hours.
The first outage began at approximately 8:31 p.m. Wednesday when Ben Lomond area residents lost power that wasn’t restored until midday Thursday because of a fallen tree into electrical equipment, according to PG&E. That outage at its peak affected 2,194 customers.
The company reported that some 800 Santa Cruz residents were still being affected Thursday afternoon. That outage began around 6:28 a.m., affected nearly 2,310 customers at its peak and the cause is still under investigation, PG&E said.
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According to corporate relations representative Tamar Sarkissian, the Santa Cruz outage was on the same circuit that was affected earlier this week.
“Our primary focus has been on restoring power to all customers, and we thank our customers for their patience,” she said. “PG&E personnel have been working to restore affected customers and make repairs, safely and as quickly as possible.”
The area has experienced multiple power outages this summer, largely due to drought-intensified conditions leading to extremely dry fuel conditions and the receptivity of those fuels to ignite and spread quickly. Sarkissian said PG&E hopes to increase the sensitivity of its fault-sensing devices — namely circuit breakers — to avoid fire arcs and sparks that could lead to larger fire issues.