After less than 24 hours in the dark in Contra Costa County, communities are starting to get their power back, including in West County.
With winds decreasing and fire risks lessening,
PG&E has started the process of turning power back on in communities affected by outages. This "re-energizing" process is occurring on a rolling basis, after PG&E has inspected
transformers and lines.
I've had reports of restored power throughout West Contra Costa including in El Sobrante, Kensington, Pinole and El Sobrante.
A great source for all kinds of
updated information on the power outage is Contra Costa County's
main website
.
The County's Office of Emergency Services and Office of Communication are operating 24-7 response centers, and will continue to do so until outages are completely over.
This power outage resulted in schools and businesses closing, healthcare disrupted and residents severely inconvenienced. This is unacceptable in our state, the world's 5th largest economy. I agree with Governor Newsom's comments today that PG&E needs to be held accountable for this power outage caused by its "greed and mismanagement." Its failure to modernize the power grid and transmission system led to this disruptive event. Our state needs to address the issue of insuring that our electric grid is modernized so that this does not become the "new normal."