UPDATE: Friday, Feb. 15, 4:30 p.m. -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company issued this update:
More than 250 PG&E workers and partner utility workers are in the North Valley, where heavy, low-elevation snow and heavy rains on Wednesday fell trees and damaged power lines and poles. The extensive damage to PG&E equipment, coupled with blocked roads and snowy terrain, impacted 60,000 PG&E customers at its peak on early Wednesday morning. As of 4 p.m. Friday, about 22,000 customer remain without power, most of them – or about 19,000 – are in Shasta County, which was hit especially hard by severe weather. Nearly 3,000 are without power in Tehama County communities of Cottonwood, Lyonsville, Mineral, Mill Creek and Manton. With adverse weather this weekend, there may be fresh power outages. PG&E crews and its partner crews are working to assess and repair damages to electric equipment.
ORIGINAL POST: Thursday, Feb. 14, 3:30 p.m. -- Shasta County and nearby areas are still recovering from Wednesday morning’s snow storm. It dumped up to 14 inches of snow and wiped out power for over 80,000 homes and businesses. With another storm and possible floods on the way, utilities are urging people to manage their expectations.
Crews are working to restore electricity to homes and businesses. Thursday afternoon, about 27,000 PG& E customers and about 2,000 Redding Electric Utility customers were still without power.
Ted Miller, a spokesman with REU, says power has been restored to priority services in Redding such as hospitals and waste water facilities.
He says REU is hoping all customers will have electricity by early next week, but with another storm on the way there is no guarantee. Miller says crews are working as quickly as possible, but he asks that customers be patient.
"We know that there’s the one or two at the end of streets with a tree across the line or at their home where a tree has taken out service to their home, but we have to get the larger public served first," he says.
Both REU and PG& E are warning customers to stay away from power lines they see on the ground, even if they think those lines are not energized. Instead, report the downed lines to your utility company.
