First 2020 PG&E preemptive power cut adds more hardship for Sonoma County residents

Cindy Demoore, 61, was pressure washing her bike Tuesday after a morning ride in the east Santa Rosa hills when her husband, Robert Buck, 60, burst in the garage door.

He was visibly frustrated. Buck was working his engineering job for Keysight Technologies inside their Skyhawk area home, as he has for six months since the pandemic forced area offices to close.

On Tuesday, everything was a little more erratic. PG&E had cut power to 17,685 Sonoma County customers in the early morning hours, and while Demoore was cleaning her bike, the electricity their generator had been providing suddenly went off.

“He’s stressed,” Demoore said, after her husband walked back inside the house. “It’s a compounded situation. But I’m very grateful. We didn’t lose our home like another segment of the county. You have to look at what you have and (appreciate it).”

Sonoma County residents and businesses are experiencing yet another stress test this week with PG&E preemptively cutting power for an estimated 40 hours to try to avert yet another wildfire. A National Weather Service red flag that began late Monday warning of possible wind gusts combined with low humidity that could escalate the potential for wildfires prompted the utility’s first fire-related power outage in 2020. The warning, unless extended, expires Wednesday morning at 8 a.m., and then utility crews are expected to begin the daylong restoration process.

An estimated 15,052 customers were unplugged in Santa Rosa alone, and an additional 2,633 were affected in unincorporated areas, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Countywide, power is supposed to be restored by 7 p.m. Wednesday, the utility said Tuesday night.

Over 5,000 Napa County customers, primarily in Calistoga and St. Helena, also were temporarily left in the dark.

The power went out as a record-setting Labor Day weekend heat wave finally pushed out of the region. Still, wildfires continued to burn in west county and throughout California, filling skies with smoke and ash that have colored the sun an ominous orange for much of the past three weeks.

And like everything this year, the blackouts are occurring during the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced a prolonged at-home work environment for students and professionals, increasing the need for reliable electricity.

The local blackout on Tuesday was mostly limited to east Santa Rosa and parts of the Sonoma Valley that last year took the brunt of six PG&E shut-offs in the North Bay.

State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, who has been a staunch critic of PG&E and its preemptive outages, acknowledged Tuesday that this time the power cut affected smaller populations compared to last year, but he remained unconvinced the utility has done enough to make the grid safer.

“The only reason we’re seeing improvement today is because they’re being forced to upgrade their system,” McGuire said. “While this initial (blackout) is more targeted, the jury is still out on their long-term turnaround plan.”

The shut-off weighed heavy on seniors in the Oakmont area who, based on age and varying health conditions, can be the most susceptible to the fatal side of COVID-19. They were subjected to each blackout last year, and evacuated multiple times since the 2017 firestorm.

Oakmont residents Julie Jones and her spouse, Tekla Nyberg, have been staunch quarantine adherents this year, leaving only twice since mid-March, Jones said.

The quiet of her neighborhood now was broken by the whirring of gas-powered generators, which in a year have quickly become a familiar sound.

“We’ve got backup batteries, so we’ll survive if it isn’t much longer than tomorrow night,” Jones said. “I get irritated at some point, but hey, we live in a beautiful place.”

In east Santa Rosa, the first signs of the blackout were apparent at the Mission Boulevard and Sonoma Highway intersection. There, digital price markers at a Valero gas station sign were blank and several nearby strip shopping centers were dark.

Generators were chained to utility boxes along the east Santa Rosa thoroughfare so traffic signals kept working at some of the busiest intersections in the area.

At Middle Rincon Road, Sammy’s Smoke Shop was one of a few stores with its doors open on a stretch of roadside retailers near Douglas Whited Elementary School, which included a comic book shop, pet salon, hot tub store and a holistic animal care service.

Further east, shopping centers like Skyhawk Village and Valley of the Moon Plaza were completely dark, with handwritten or printed notes telling customers they’d be closed until power was restored.

The first darkened intersection beyond the city’s urban core was in front of Skyhawk Village, where city workers had stationed stop signs to mitigate the traffic disruption.

John and Denise Papia of Oakmont had some luck, as they completed a morning of errands at Safeway on Calistoga Road. They nabbed the last two bags of ice, which have been coveted by local shoppers hoping to avoid food loss and keep cool during the heat wave.

The retired couple has lived in the east Santa Rosa senior community for two years, and quickly gotten used to living with evacuations and repeated power outages. For-sale signs have become increasingly more common in their neighborhood, John Papia said, but the fire danger is a trade-off for living in the heart of Wine Country.

“People are leaving because they can’t deal with the stress,” Papia said. “It’s something we’ve talked about, but we’re not there yet. We’ll see after October.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misstated Robert Buck’s employer. He works for Keysight Technologies in Santa Rosa.

Staff Writer Ethan Varian contributed to this story. You can reach Staff Writer Yousef Baig at 707-521-5390 or yousef.baig@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @YousefBaig.