California Wildfires: 3400 people still powerless after PG&E shutdown

A car passes power lines Highway 12 near Glen Ellen, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 15, 2018. Some customers in the region remain without power after PG&E cut electric service in hopes of preventing fires amid red flag fire warnings.
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A car passes power lines Highway 12 near Glen Ellen, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 15, 2018. Some customers in the region remain without power after PG&E cut electric service in hopes of preventing fires amid red
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Photo: Noah Berger / The Chronicle

Photo: Noah Berger / The Chronicle

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A car passes power lines Highway 12 near Glen Ellen, Calif., on Monday, Oct. 15, 2018. Some customers in the region remain without power after PG&E cut electric service in hopes of preventing fires amid red flag fire warnings.

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Photo: Noah Berger / The Chronicle

More than 3,400 people in Northern California remained without electricity early Tuesday as part of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s pre-emptive power shutdown to minimize the chance of a downed power line sparking a blaze during a spell of bone-dry conditions and gusty winds.

The outage started Saturday night. At it’s peak, more than 60,000 people were without electricity, according to PG&E.

By Tuesday morning, 1,794 people were without power in parts of Calistoga, Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, and about 1,640 people in Lake County remained in the dark.

The shutdown was an unprecedented move by the utility to prevent the possibility of power lines igniting the kind of deadly wildfires seen last year in wine country, which were fueled by dry vegetation, low humidity and strong winds.

A red flag fire warning was in effect from late Saturday through Monday morning for the North Bay and East Bay hills, including the Diablo Range, according to the National Weather Forecast.

“The critically dry conditions may persist for the next few days,” said Roger Gass, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

By Tuesday morning, the threat of fire was contained to elevations above 1,500 feet, Gass said.

Conditions are nowhere near as concerning as they were the last few days, when “those really dry conditions made it down all the way to the valley floor and pushed it all over the coast,” Gass said.

On Monday, PG&E restored power to 40,000 people in the North Bay and Sierra Foothills, officials said. The utility expected to turn electricity on for the remaining people impacted at some point Tuesday.

In total, seven counties experienced a power shut down: Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado and Placer.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani

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