PG&E CEO Geisha Williams Meets with Local Leaders Impacted by Unprecedented Wildfires
October 13 2017 - 6:52PM
Business Wire
PG&E Offers Support and Resources for
Impacted Communities
PG&E Corporation CEO Geisha Williams today met with local
community leaders in Rohnert Park (Sonoma County) at one of the
company’s base camps. This site is one of four locations where the
company is marshalling crews, restoration supplies, equipment and
vehicles to respond to the electric and gas outages from wildfires
fueled by intense winds.
Williams shared the status of electric and gas restoration
efforts so far, and listened to community leaders who shared their
needs and expectations during the process.
"We have been part of these communities for more than 100 years.
These people are our friends and neighbors, and we are devastated
by what they are going through. We will work shoulder to shoulder
with them to restore and rebuild what’s been lost, for as long as
it takes,” said PG&E Corporation President and CEO Geisha
Williams.
To support local first responders, PG&E has activated
multiple emergency centers, established base camps for its crews in
Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties, and positioned crews to
assess the damage and restore customers’ gas and electric service.
PG&E also has activated mutual-aid agreements with other energy
companies to bring in additional resources. Crews from five states
have temporarily joined PG&E’s workforce to help restore
electric and gas service when safe to do so.
On Friday, PG&E continued supporting the hundreds of
firefighters battling intense wind-fueled wildfires across Northern
California, focusing on customers and public safety. Since Monday,
PG&E has restored power to more than 80 percent of homes and
businesses that lost power during Sunday’s wind storm. Of the
42,000 gas customers who had service turned off to make the area
safe, approximately 8,800 have had their service restored. About
2,000 workers continue to restore electric and gas service to every
home and business that can receive it.
The powerful winds that swept across PG&E’s service area
late Sunday and early Monday produced several hours of strong gusts
in excess of 60 mph across parts of the North Bay, including gusts
up to 79 mph. The onset of these destructive winds quickly
dried out the lower levels of the atmosphere, bringing humidity
down to below 15 percent, which helped create a favorable situation
for rapid fire growth.
Since this event began, PG&E has taken a number of actions
in response to the wind-driven wildfires, including the
following:
- Restored 87% percent of customers’
homes and businesses that were without power. In total, about
270,000 PG&E electric customers have lost power since the fires
began on Sunday night. As of 9 a.m. on Friday, about 29,000
fire-related outages remained.
- Turned off gas service as a safety
precaution to about 42,000 customers’ homes and businesses in
communities hard-hit by the fires. PG&E dispatched more
than 200 employees to relight pilots in areas where safe to do so.
Thus far, 8,800 gas customers have been restored.
- Dispatched more than 2,000 PG&E
contract and mutual aid employees as part of the response
effort. In addition, extra workers from energy companies in
Southern California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington and New Mexico are
assisting PG&E efforts.
- Committed $200,000 toward the North
Bay Fire Recovery Fund in partnership with the Redwood
Community Credit Union and The Press Democrat. This newly
created fund will directly support those impacted by the wildfires
in Napa, Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties.
- Matching donations from its
employees to the American Red Cross’ fire response efforts—up
to $100,000.
PG&E’s Robust Vegetation Management Practices
PG&E manages about 123 million trees on about 2 million
properties in our 70,000 square mile service area. Since 2014, in
response to the drought, PG&E has added extraordinary measures
to our tree maintenance program that prunes or removes about 1.2
million trees each year. These measures include:
- Enhanced vegetation inspection and
mitigation
- Wood debris management
- Fuel reduction and emergency response
access
- Early detection of wildfires and forest
disease and infestation
- Public education and awareness
- Participation in Governor’s Tree
Mortality Task Force
PG&E executes a year-round program to perform tree abatement
work along our electric transmission and distribution overhead
lines. Work includes:
- Foot and aerial patrols, in addition to
the use of remote sensing technology, specifically LiDAR
Light-detecting and Ranging, to identify trees to be worked.
- Inspecting along power lines in high
fire-danger areas twice a year, and some areas as often as four
times a year. In 2016, we conducted these additional patrols on
68,000 miles of power line, and in 2017 we expect to patrol 73,000
miles of line a second time.
- In 2016, we removed about 236,000 dead
or dying trees, in addition to pruning or removing about 1.2
million trees under the annual program to prevent contact with
power lines. This is about seven times more trees removed than our
pre-drought three-year average.
- In 2017, we expect to remove about
150,000 dead trees to prevent them from contacting power lines,
starting wildfires and other public safety risks.
PG&E Commits Full Cooperation with CPUC and Cal
Fire
When allowed access to an affected area, PG&E reports any
instances associated with its utility infrastructure, including
wires down, broken poles and other impacted facilities as a result
of the wildfires to its regulator, the California Public Utilities
Commission (CPUC). Since Sunday’s windstorm, the company has
submitted seven electric incident reports related to damaged
facilities to the CPUC. PG&E will continue to support reviews
by any relevant regulator or agency.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E
Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas
and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San
Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers
some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in
Northern and Central California. For more information, visit
www.pge.com/ and
www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
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