PG&E says it has 260 personnel out inspecting 800 miles of power lines to ensure they are safe to turn back on. The utility says it expects to restore all power within 24 to 48 hours.
"We appreciate our customers’ and the public’s patience as we work through this important safety step in the restoration process,” said Michael Lewis, PG&E’s senior vice president of electric operations, in a statement.
PG&E is operating a community resource center at Harrison Stadium in Oroville from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday to provide "restrooms, bottled water, electronic device charging and air-conditioned seating for up to 100 customers each" for those effected by the Sierra Foothills shutdown.
Early on Saturday morning, PG&E cut the power to some 1,600 customers in Napa, Solano and Yolo counties due to high fire risk in the area. The utility announced Saturday night that power had been restored to all of those customers, after initially saying it would take 24 to 48 hours to do so.
That outage affected parts of unincorporated Napa County and Lake Berryessa, parts of Suisun City, unincorporated areas near Vacaville and Winters, and unincorporated areas near Davis and Winters.
For both shutdowns, the utility says it is contacting effected customers by phone, text and email. Customers can also type their address into PG&E's outage map to see if they are covered by the shutdown.
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for the North Bay mountains on Friday night that lasts through Sunday afternoon, meaning that any fires that start could spread quickly due to high winds, high temperatures and low humidity. The agency has also put much of the Bay Area under a heat advisory on Sunday with record and near-record temperatures in the triple digits forecast for much of the region.
