Sonoma County leaders outline plans to help residents brace for PG&E power shut-offs

Local officials are bracing for myriad effects from PG&E’s expanded power shut-off plan, which could lead to prolonged blackouts for thousands of Sonoma County residents in order to limit devastating wildfires.

After its equipment sparked numerous Northern California wildfires in 2017, PG&E broadened a fire-prevention effort now in effect to consider shutting down not only small power lines connected to homes, but larger transmission lines that carry electricity across Northern California to the utility’s nearly 5 million customers.

Executing temporary outages will be based on whether the weather is ripe for wildfire - hot, dry and windy conditions - as well as Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s real-time meteorological observations.

But the scope of the potential power shut-offs is tough to predict because of the variability of weather and the vast number of potential scenarios, PG&E officials say.

The agency’s public affairs representative for Sonoma and Lake counties, Herman G. Hernandez, delivered presentations and fielded questions Tuesday about the utility’s power shut-off plan to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and the Santa Rosa City Council.

After grumbling about the need to prepare for widespread power outages, the supervisors Tuesday approved a robust plan outlining how officials would respond to power shut-offs and the multiple complications and hazards that widespread blackouts pose: lack of cellphone service; disabled traffic lights; inoperable bank ATM machines and gas pumps; and closed grocery stores and restaurants.

County officials urged PG&E to eventually develop a fire-safety alternative to shutting off power to customers.

“This is going to be a shock to people,” Supervisor James Gore said. “There’s no way the community’s going to be prepared.”

Sonoma County’s analysis of PG&E’s information, including a confidential map that officials blurred for Tuesday’s public presentations, indicated that a massive temporary outage could affect more than 400,000 county residents and 20,000 businesses - 90% of the county.

“This is a significant new challenge,” said Chris Godley, Sonoma County Emergency Management director. “It’s been a generation since we’ve seen large-scale power outages in Sonoma County.”

At a study session Tuesday afternoon, City Council members and City Manager Sean McGlynn repeatedly pressed the utility, through Hernandez, to be more involved in educating the public about how to be prepared for potential temporary outages.

McGlynn said the strategy the county approved to help residents and businesses contend with potential PG&E blackouts has drawn the attention of state officials. He credited Godley and Neil Bregman, Santa Rosa’s emergency preparedness coordinator, for the comprehensive strategic approach.

Anticipating a worst-case scenario that would be severe but manageable, Santa Rosa officials said about 50,000 city residents and about 210,000 county residents could lose power for up to a week.

PG&E’s Hernandez said the utility will try to notify customers 48 to 72 hours before shutting off their lights.

“That would be the gold standard,” Hernandez told City Council. “We haven’t been able to meet that yet in the three public safety power shut-off events that I have been a part of over the last 13 months, but it is our goal.”

Complicating matters, PG&E workers would need to wait to restore power until whatever weather conditions prompted the shut-off to subside before sending out crews in helicopters, ATVs and trucks to check miles of power lines. Hernandez said that large-scale power outages affecting more line mileage also are likely to last longer given the extended time required to check the electric grid.

“Our community may be more isolated during one of these public safety power shut-offs than it has been in the last 50 years,” Godley said.

One possible outcome - the extended loss of cellphone service - was particularly alarming to local officials, given that it would hinder their ability to reach residents via mobile phone alerts to inform them of new developments. Bregman said the best estimate was that cellphone towers would have up to eight hours of back-up battery power.

At the City Council meeting, Santa Rosa resident Diane Wheeler of Santa Rosa raised the specter of a wildfire erupting during a prolonged power outage to try to avert a blaze.

“How do those people who are already without power or communication know what’s happening?” she said.

If cellphone service goes down, officials might set up impromptu emergency reporting sites at buildings like fire stations to relay citizens’ requests for service to local first responders - essentially “recreating the call box system with human call boxes,” Bregman said.

“Anything’s on the table” when it comes to preserving public access to first responders, Bregman said. “It may be more difficult given the circumstances, but we’re not going to let that system go dark completely.”