UPDATED: PG&E customers begin receiving shutoff notices in Plumas
UPDATE 11:09 a.m.: Sgt. Carson Wingfield, who heads up the OES efforts for Plumas County, released the following information from PG&E: Due to the forecast winds being exceptionally strong, there are impacts to transmission lines that will result in a much larger area of Plumas County affected and hence many more customers. As of now the areas affected included Chester, Lake Almanor and basin communities, Greenville, Taylorsville and communities in Indian Valley, East Quincy, Meadow Valley and Bucks Lake as well as communities in the Feather River drainage. It does look like Quincy will remain on in power, just not East Quincy.
The number of affected customers are 9,370 of which 429 are medical base line and we have initiated calls to those individuals with a 75 percent contact success rate to date. We will continue calls today and move to door knocks as well to try to ensure positive contact as much as possible.
Original story: More information is becoming available regarding the potential PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoffs scheduled to go into effect tomorrow. The shutoffs could include Chester, Greenville, Taylorsville and Quincy (cutoff appears to be Lindan Avenue again) beginning Sunday, Oct. 25, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., and potentially lasting through Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 10 p.m.
Some customers have already reported receiving notices. To check your address, use the following link https://pgealerts.alerts.pge.com/updates/
Plums Unified School District students were set to return to in-class learning Monday, Oct. 26, but now several school sites are slated to be impacted so there will be no in-person learning at those sites. PCOE/PUSD sites impacted are all school sites in Chester, Greenville, Taylorsville and in Quincy the Bus Barn, Pioneer Campus (Alder Campus isn’t scheduled to be without power, but will remain closed) and Quincy High School. The district’s servers will be impacted, so a backup generation source is being set up.
PG&E Meteorology is monitoring a dry and potent weather system which is expected to move through the territory Sunday into Monday and generate strong and gusty northeast winds increasing through the day Sunday, peaking Sunday night into Monday, and possibly lingering in some regions through early Tuesday. Although details are still evolving, sustained winds of 15-30 mph and widespread gusts to 40-50+ mph are possible across large portions of the territory. Relative humidity values will also plummet to the single digits and teens with the onset of winds allowing for critically dry conditions and fuels being very receptive to ignition.
The areas with the highest probability of being affected by power shutoffs for this event are the adjacent terrain of the northern and western Sacramento Valley, Northern and Central Sierra, as well as higher terrain of the Bay Area, including the Santa Cruz Mountains, Central Coast Region and portions of southern Kern. Based on the information released this morning, approximately 440,000 customers could be impacted.
