October 12, 2021 - PG&E continues to work to restore customers affected by yesterday’s wind event.
Currently there are 257 separate outages affecting 3,603 customers in the Fresno Division (Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties) and 81 outages affecting 2,956 customers in the Yosemite Division, which stretches from Madera to Stanislaus counties.
In Fresno 188 of those customers are affected by a Public Safety Power Shutoff in Coalinga. They are expected to be restored by 10:00 p.m. tonight.
Also there are two Enhanced Powerline Safety Setting outages related to the storm in Fresno affecting about 800 customers each in the Auberry and Dunlap areas. We expect those customers to be restored about 4:00 p.m. today.
Earlier today, PG&E received a message from a customer asking us to help rescue her mother’s cat from a power pole in the 800 block of West Santa Ana in Clovis. Initially we let her know that it might be quite a while before we would have a crew available to try and rescue the cat due to the storm. Also, rescuing cats from poles is actually dangerous for our crews, and for the cat, because frightened cats have been known to scratch and bite their rescuers or jump rather than climb down, resulting in injury or death. However, we asked the customer to send a photo so we could let our crew know what they might be dealing with.
She sent the photo below. It turns out that the cat climbed the pole before the windstorm, and during the windstorm a branch on a nearby tree was damaged and leaned into the pole below our lines. Though the branch was several feet below our lines, there was a risk that it would break further and cause damage. With that in mind we sent a worker out, and within an hour both the cat and the powerline were safe.
PG&E reminds customers to please call us if they see any hazards near our lines, such as trees or branches.
And never attempt to climb the poles to rescue animals themselves.
The lines in the photo were live, and it is unsafe for anyone other than a trained utility worker to work near them.
