About 5,000 San Francisco Pacific Gas and Electric customers were still without power Monday after a massive power outage left about a third of the city in the dark on Saturday, the utility company said.
PG&E said the remaining customers without power were mostly in the Richmond, Presidio and Civic Center neighborhoods. City facilities in the impacted Civic Center area were closed for in-person services on Monday, including City Hall, the Mail Library, and SFMTA customer service.
On Sunday morning, PG&E said it had restored power to 110,000 customers. By the afternoon, about an additional 4,000 customers had service restored. According to the utility company, there was a fire at one of its substations, and it caused “significant and extensive” damage.
At a press conference Monday, PG&E said the fire at the substation on Mission and 8th streets started shortly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, and the utility had to de-energize portions of the system to make it safe for firefighters to fight the fire.
As of Monday afternoon, the cause of the fire is unknown.
On Sunday, PG&E said it expected all customers affected by the substation outage to have power by 2 p.m. Monday at the latest. However, a PG&E spokesperson said Monday that while 96% of the outages would be resolved by 2 p.m. Monday, the estimated time of restoration for the remaining customers was pushed back to 6 a.m. Tuesday.
The San Francisco Department of Emergency Services said on Sunday that PG&E would be setting up a community resource center, along with city staff, for those without power, ahead of an expected wave of heavy rain from an atmospheric river. It will be open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and will be located at 251 18th Avenue, at the Richmond Rec Center. After Sunday, it will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
Mayor Daniel Lurie said there was a small business outreach plan to let businesses affected by the outage know they can file claims with PG&E.
“Some customers are starting to get power back with PG&E restoring power to 4,000 more homes, but there are still 17,000 customers without power. If you have a small business that’s impacted, you can file a claim at http://pge.com/claim,” Lurie said.
At the peak of the outage, the utility company said about 130,000 customers were affected.
Muni disruptions
Muni service along the Market Street Subway was affected due to the power outage, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Muni Alerts.
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
Muni riders who are affected by the service disruption can use BART for free between Embarcadero and Civic Center, BART said.
“See a station agent to be let in,” BART said.
Waymo suspends service
The autonomous driving technology company suspended its robotaxi services during the power outage.
The company announced Sunday that it was resuming its ride-hailing services.
“While the Waymo Driver is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections,” Waymo said. “This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion.”
