People living in the Bayside Apartments in Pinole spent much of the holiday weekend in the cold and dark due to a power outage that still hadn't been permanently resolved by Monday.
Many residents at the Sunnyview Drive complex, such as Marna Anning and Lesley Sanchez, endured no heat and no hot water over the Christmas holiday because of what is believed to be a blown PG&E transformer.
Sanchez has power tonight, but it was touch and go for 15 hours or so.
"The last couple of days we’ve had, Christmas Eve, yesterday and this morning in and out, in and out. You can’t wash dishes, you can’t do anything," She said.
That’s scary for a woman who takes care of her disabled son full time. Sanchez needs power to move him around, and he sometimes needs oxygen. Above all, she needs to keep her son clean and warm.
"If you have to bathe, you can’t boil water because you have no electricity," she said. "You can’t heat it up."
With temperatures dropping into the 30s, Sanchez felt vulnerable.
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"It’s unsanitary, it’s unhealthy and it’s not fair," she said.
Anning said it has greatly impacted her family's ability to enjoy the holiday.
"I had to wrap presents in the dark," she said. "It’s a bummer. And it’s cold out here."
As of Monday evening, Bayside's four three-story buildings that count children and seniors as residents had power from a PG&E generator. Anning said PG&E’s outage website confirmed there is an outage in her area due to "a problem with the transformer." She recalled hearing a large explosion a couple weeks ago and believes it was the transformer.
PG&E confirmed they were working on a transformer problem.
"I think what they need to do is fix it so it will stay on," Anning said.
