bay area storm

Peninsula PG&E Customers Frustrated With Lengthy Power Outages After Storm

The powerful weekend storm knocked out power to thousands of customers across the Peninsula

NBC Universal, Inc. Some people on the Peninsula who haven’t had electricity for more than 50 hours following a weekend storm were still without power Tuesday evening. Marianne Favro reports.

Some people on the Peninsula who haven't had electricity for more than 50 hours due to the weekend storm were still without power Tuesday evening.

Instead of enjoying his grass-fed beef, Josh Weinberg was tossing it in the trash. He was also pouring his ice cream, yogurt and cottage cheese down the drain. For over 45 hours, Josh has had no power at his Burlingame home and no working fridge and freezer.

"It just threw our life into turmoil," Weinberg said.

The outage has also impacted his ability to work.

"It made it really tough to work," he said. "You know, in the pandemic, we all work from home. So, I was trying to use an iPad with a cellular connection to do Zoom calls. It was really tough."

With no hot water and no idea when power would be restored, Weinberg and his family spent Monday night in a hotel. The costs of the outage have been adding up.

"I’m sure the whole thing, we're probably running $800 between the hotel and the food," he said.

The powerful weekend storm knocked out power to thousands of customers across the Peninsula. Weinberg understands PG&E crews are doing their best to restore it, but he said the company's response to customers fell short.

"The biggest frustration is the lack of good information coming from PG&E," he said. "For the first day and a half, they could give us no information whatsoever about when a crew might even evaluate the problem."

The power outages have also been hitting some Burlingame businesses hard.
After the storm, Pizza My Heart had power in half of its restaurant. On Tuesday, they lost that.

"We’re having to turn people away, turn away customers that we'd like to be able to feed for lunch and dinner this evening," Pizza My Heart General Manager Chris Rothacher said. "Greatly impacting our takeout, delivery and dine-in business."

PG&E said the large number of sudden outages from the massive storm has been challenging. The company said it has 3,000 employees in the field working to restore power and even brought in help from San Diego. In addition, PG&E said it regularly updates its website to give customers an idea when their lights will go back on.

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