Power outages still plaguing North Coast

<p>Storms continued to wreak havoc on the North Coast power grid Friday, prompting new outages even as PG&E crews repaired old ones.</p><p>By mid-morning, the power was out at nearly 4,000 households and businesses around Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties, though more than a thousand customers quickly had power restored, a PG&E spokeswoman said.</p><p>The largest outage affected 1,619 customers in and around Point Arena on the Mendocino Coast, where the lights went out at 9:30 a.m., PG&E representative Jana Morris said. Power was restored to all but 780 customers within an hour, she said.</p><p>More than 1,300 customers also were in the dark in various neighborhoods on Lake County's Cobb Mountain, where snow fell much of Thursday and remained on the ground Friday morning, making access to repair sites difficult, Morris said.</p><p>“We're having to go in on foot to some of those,” she said.</p><p>Crews were hoping to have power restored by Friday night, she said.</p><p>In Sonoma County, 757 customers were without electricity at one point in 41 separate outages, including two on Santa Rosa Avenue in south Santa Rosa that affected a total 614 customers.</p><p>Power was restored to 423 households south of Bellevue Avenue by about 10 a.m. Another 191 buildings between Yolanda Avenue and Burt Street still were darkened, Morris said. </p><p>Additional outages included about 20 households in east Sonoma, east of Napa Road, as well as about 45 in the Cotati/Rohnert Park area, she said.</p>