Caitlin Starke, who moved to the Richmond two weeks ago and has a baby, said she did not receive any communication about the planned outage from PG&E.
She had heard of last month’s blackout but said she didn’t know that was the cause of the disruptive generators.
“There’s someone parked in a truck right on my block, and it’s blinking lights at all hours of the day,” she said. “I think I’m slowly losing my mind.”
PG&E lists instructions to prepare for a planned outage on their website, including charging personal devices, preparing a battery-powered flashlight and stocking bottled water.
Supervisors Alan Wong and Connie Chan posted a map on Instagram displaying planned outage zones. Bueler said the map was hard to navigate. “You can’t even read the streets.”
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected to hold a public hearing with PG&E next month, where affected residents and business owners can raise concerns about response and claims with company representatives.
PG&E generators at 24th Street and Balboa in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 2026. (Martin do Nascimento/KQED)
Wong and Chan, who oversee the Sunset and Richmond districts respectively, have both held meetings with business owners to help them file claims. Restaurants were hit especially hard in the December blackout, losing refrigerated inventory and holiday weekend revenue.
“When we return to normal operations, we expect this will help avoid some of the brief outages that customers in the Richmond District/Golden Gate Park area have experienced in the last couple of weeks,” PG&E said in a statement.
“We know these outages have been frustrating for our customers, and we’ve been working tirelessly during this time to inspect equipment and develop plans to provide the reliability that our customers expect and deserve.”