Tens of thousands across Bay Area lose power on Christmas morning as another storm moves through

By Cecilio Padilla

Tens of thousands of PG&E customers across the Bay Area are again without power on Christmas morning after another wet and windy storm moves through Northern California. 

As of 6 a.m. Thursday, PG&E says a total of more than 65,000 customers are without power. The biggest cluster of outages are in the North Bay with more than 24,000 in the dark, the Peninsula with 17,000, the South Bay with 16,000, and the East Bay with 6,700.

Thursday’s outages come after Wednesday morning’s fire at a PG&E substation in Saratoga. That fire broke out at about 8:25 a.m., initially impacting about 21,000 customers in Santa Clara County. 

There was no immediate word on the cause of the fire. It extinguished on its own before fire crews arrived, according to PG&E.

“We have to do the forensics because the equipment was damaged by the fire,” said PGE spokesperson Stephanie Magallon. “We have to figure out what the root cause was before we can say if it was weather-related or not, but we do know it was an equipment failure.”

At 4 p.m., PG&E said power had been restored to several thousand customers, leaving 18,834 customers without electricity. There were 3,395 without power in the Peninsula, 13,511 in the North Bay, 87 in the East Bay and 1,836 in the South Bay. 

The number of customers without power decreased around 7 p.m. PG&E said the Peninsula had 1,807 without power, the North Bay 11,807, the East Bay 364 and the South Bay 2,674, for a total of 16,810, including 158 San Francisco.

By 9 p.m., more residents had lost power, including over 1,000 customers in San Francisco, only four days after a massive outage that left 130,000 PG&E customers in the city without electricity. 

Supervisor Alan Wong issued a statement saying in part, “This evening marks the fourth PG&E power outage this month affecting the Sunset District. On Christmas Eve, once again, some of our neighbors are without power. This level of disruption is unacceptable.”

The total number of Bay Area customers without power was 19,319. There were 1,521 without power in San Francisco, 1,625 in the Peninsula, 6,569 in the North Bay, 86 in the East Bay and  9,518 in the South Bay, according to PG&E.

A high wind warning and wind advisory were in effect for most of the Bay Area through Wednesday morning. 

Downtown Saratoga businesses on Big Basin Way, including Anchors Fish & Chips & Seafood, say the power went out early, but glad it was restored in time for lunch.

Mei Huang and her husband have served up steaming hot bagels for 30 years at Saratoga Bagels. They didn’t lose electricity this time, but know very well how painful it can be for their bottom line, especially during the holiday rush.

“A lot of food, the whole freezer had to be thrown out. That’s no fun,” said Huang.

Varna Chandar, who’s back home for the holidays, says her electricity in San Francisco got knocked out last weekend. She’s hoping the next windstorm doesn’t shut off the Christmas lights.

“It would be really sad if the power is out during Christmas Day or even today during Christmas Eve, because me and my family and friends are planning to do a lot of things at home,” said Chandar.

Small businesses like Saratoga Bagels are banking on the power to stay on.

“We want to make sure we’re open every day, because I see a lot of people coming back from home,” said Huang.

PG&E said the investigation into the fire at the Saratoga substation was ongoing.