SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco supervisors are demanding answers about what caused the widespread PG&E power outages that impacted businesses and residents back in December. A hearing was held on Thursday.
“I want to be very clear that we take responsibility for the outage last December. Our response was unacceptable,” said PG&E CEO Sameet Singh.
Singh’s apology stems from the Dec. 20 outage caused by a substation fire, which cut power to a third of San Francisco — some for over three days.
“One hundred thirty thousand customers lost power during one of the biggest weekends of the year,” Singh said.
The hearing was a fact-finding mission by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to get answers about why the outage happened and what took PG&E so long to get the power back on, especially to underserved neighborhoods around Civic Center.
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“The equity of the response is clear: they don’t have protocol in place to ensure there’s an equitable response in San Francisco. We’re holding them accountable,” said Supervisor Bilal Mahmood.
PG&E said a fire at its Mission Substation, caused by a circuit breaker, was first detected at 1:04 p.m., but the utility didn’t notify the fire department until 2:30 p.m. At 6:30 p.m., crews were able to enter the building to begin power restoration.
“We had to de-energize other substations. Because the electric system is inter-connected, so we had to put that substation on an island, so it was isolated and safe for first responders,” Singh said.
The city says there was confusion.
“Hospitals were on generators, Fire had to modify its response,” said Mary Ellen Carroll, Director of SF Emergency Services.
MORE: PG&E customers still waiting on December outage payments amid more San Francisco outages this week
The fire department said the only maps it had for the substation were on old school paper.
“We’re in the 21st century and PG&E is still on paper? these are clear indications it’s struggling to meet the needs of SF during an emergency response,” Mahmood said.
The utility is vowing to do better by upgrading its map and notification system and committing to work with the city to change its internal procedures and protocols.
The supervisors will schedule another hearing in a few months to get a progress report from PG&E.
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