As PG&E continues post-hurricane repairs, thousands remain without power

While there was some sunshine in the Bay Area on Friday, thousands of people in the region were still without power due to the latest series of storms.

As of Friday afternoon, PG&E said 7,213 of its Bay Area customers were without power. The region that saw the most of these outages was the South Bay, where 4,022 customers were left without power on Friday afternoon.

However, additional shutdowns appear to have continued until Friday evening. While the PG&E crash map showed that the San Jose and Saratoga crash affected 32,000 people on Friday night, a PG&E spokesperson told NBC Bay Area that it was a map error and that 654 people were affected. PG&E said it was investigating the cause of the Friday night power outage in the South Bay.

PG&E reports that the latest storm was very destructive in the South Bay. While the utility has made progress in restoring light to the more than 140,000 customers without power earlier this week, it has been a frustrating and confusing time for customers who were still left in the dark.

Near Summit Road in Los Gatos, the peaceful sounds of the Santa Cruz Mountains are interrupted by the hum of generators.

“There is a whole community here that has no power,” explained Julian Hawkins, who lived there. Hawkins said earlier this week that thousands of people in the area were left without power. As of Friday evening, more than 150 PG&E customers near Summit Road were listed as being out of power.

A group of neighbors met the NBC Bay Area there, explaining that they had been in the dark for the last four days and a total of twenty days this year.

“For me and my wife, we have a generator, we have invested in solar energy to deal with this, there are other people here who do not have money for this,” Hawkins noted, explaining that this shutdown is especially difficult for his neighbors. who are elderly or have health problems.

NBC Bay Area contacted PG&E to ask why the glitch has not yet been fixed, we have not received a response.

But the PG&E website estimates that power will be restored to the area by 10 p.m. Saturday. In a statement earlier in the day on Friday, PG&E said it expects “the vast majority of customers” to be restored by the end of the day on Saturday.