Thousands of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers who suffered electricity outages during the triple-digit heat wave that roasted Sonora and other parts of the Mother Lode this past weekend lost power due to overheated transformers, PG&E communications staff said Monday.
Sonora and Jamestown had more than 4,500 PG&E customers without power since Saturday, including more than 1,100 Sonora customers Sunday evening through early Monday. Groveland had more than 5,600 PG&E customers without power at different times from early Saturday through Monday morning.
Before noon Monday, the Jamestown area had more than 500 customers without power. They were restored by Monday afternoon. A PG&E spokeswoman said Jamestown had five outages Saturday and Sunday, affecting 187 customers, with power restored within eight hours for most customers. Also Monday, more than 660 PG&E customers lost power about 8 a.m. in the Copperopolis area in Calaveras County and had power restored within a couple of hours.
Most outages over the weekend and Monday were due to overheated transformers and PG&E “enhanced powerline safety settings,” PG&E staff said. They initially described them as “heat-related outages.” Pressed for more information, they said, “Transformer failure is the top cause of heat-related outages.”
Transformers, which help distribute power to homes and businesses, need periods of time when they can cool down, and that usually happens overnight, when temperatures drop, PG&E spokeswoman Evelyn Escalera said.
“When we have unusual heat events with sustained high overnight temperatures, transformers are unable to cool down,” Escalera said. “That puts stress on the transformer’s components, and they can become fatigued and can fail. Transformer failure is likelier in coastal areas with more moderate average temperatures, rather than in interior valleys that routinely experience extremely hot weather.”
Other parts of the PG&E service area, such as the Central Valley, are more accustomed to triple-digit temperatures and sustained high overnight temperatures, and have transformers built to handle more heat, Escalera said.
In Groveland, there were 13 outages that impacted 5,604 customers due to heat and enhanced powerline safety settings Saturday and Sunday. All customers were restored within 24 hours, Escalera said.
The online PG&E outage map showed 51 customers in Pine Mountain Lake were without power as of 4 p.m. Monday due to an outage that started about an hour earlier.
Some Groveland residents, business owners, and absentee vacationers called The Union Democrat to express frustration about the outages, to ask why the county’s brand-new $13 million Groveland Community Resilience Center off Ferretti Road remained closed during the heat wave and the outages, and to complain about what they felt was a lack of local representation at the county supervisor level.
Tuolumne County District 4 Supervisor Kathleen Haff was out of the county over the weekend and through the middle of this week, but she said Monday she had been in contact with county government staff and the county Office of Emergency Services since the heat wave began last week.
“We did get the resilience center open yesterday (Sunday) because PG&E kept saying they were going to restore power, but never did,” Haff said in a statement Monday.
Assistant County Administrator Eric Erhardt confirmed that county staff opened the Groveland Resiliency Center at 3 p.m. Sunday. Power was restored in the area at 4:30 p.m. and county staff then closed the center. Earlier in the day, Groveland Community Services District staff had an office space open as a cooling center, Erhardt said, and 12 to 15 people went there to try to escape the heat.
Erhardt also debunked rumors that the county’s other community resilience center in the town of Tuolumne opened over the weekend. The center was not opened at any time over the weekend, Erhardt said.
Nevertheless, multiple people in Groveland said they were frustrated about the outages and what they said was a lack of response to a local emergency during an important holiday weekend for the tourism-reliant town.
“I’m mad because this is one of the busiest weekends of the holiday summer season,” Joanie Gisler, 62, owner of Ranch Revived Decor on Main Street and Highway 120 in Groveland, said Monday. “I’ve owned Ranch Revived seven years, and we’re open seven days a week. The power being out continuously, I cannot conduct business because everything in the shop requires electricity, from the credit card machine to my cash register. Our supervisor Kathleen Haff, we have not seen her.”
Groveland has a power grid with an emergency generator downtown, but nobody has connected the generator to any working grid yet, Gisler said.
“I want answers from the county government, state assembly, federal government, and congressional representation,” Gisler said. “This is our livelihood, the traffic on the 120 corridor. I need to stay open, but no power means no business.”
Gisler also criticized the fact that the resilience center in Groveland remained closed most of the weekend.
Elisabeth Barton, 42, owner of Echo Adventure Cooperative, a hiking, fishing, backpacking, and sightseeing guide service with hotel rooms and a fly-fishing shop in downtown Groveland since 2016, said she is disappointed as a business owner this spring and summer.
“We lost spring break in April to the Yosemite park closure, due to heavy snow and rain and atmospheric rivers,” Barton said. “We lost Memorial Day weekend to the Big Oak Flat Road closure in the park, when nobody could get into the Valley. And now we’ve lost the Fourth of July weekend due to whatever the hell this is.”
The recent string of hits on Groveland’s tourism industry comprise a trend that shows Groveland is not at top of many people’s lists when it comes to community leaders, Barton said.
“It all starts with our supervisor, Kathleen Haff,” Barton said. “We look to her to see who we should be addressing our complaints to, and she’s been quiet. I think that’s my biggest concern at this point. Running a business in Groveland has become unsustainable, and we’re lacking local representation at the board level.”
Dwight Follien with the nonprofit Groveland Trail Heads said having the Groveland Community Resilience Center closed most of the weekend posed a dangerous health risk to elderly community members.
Rebecca Knops, 60, of San Mateo, whose family has a vacation home in Groveland, said her parents weren’t able to visit the town this past weekend due to the heat, but she was concerned about her son and nephew, both in their 30s, who were there this weekend.
“I’m mad because so many people are suffering up there,” Knops said. “I’m keeping up on this on social media. I’m invested in that village. I’ve been visiting for 20 years. I know my neighbors. People are suffering, and it’s not OK.”
Debbie Aldridge, 65, who lives on Noles Dirt Road, east of Groveland, sent emails to all five county supervisors on Sunday and asked “Why is our Resilience Center still not open? We are in a heat wave with a lot of elderly people needing the center during this power failure. It should not be GCSD’s job to provide a cooling center which can only help an extremely limited number of people and no pets.”
Groveland business owners Dharma Barsotti with Top of the Trail Tea and Coffee and Finn Horsley with Hotel Charlotte also contacted The Union Democrat with concerns about the outages.
Haff said Monday she was in contact with local businesses over the weekend, and when she returns to Tuolumne County, she will be asking PG&E why the micro grid in downtown Groveland was not working. It was set up, Haff said, so she doesn’t understand why it did not perform as designed on Saturday and Sunday.
Haff said she was also in contact with Groveland Community Services District about the cooling center that the agency opened in its lobby. Haff said she was also in touch with Southside Senior Connections folks during the same time period.
“There were problems at Pine Mountain Lake, because the electricity was out, and they have toilets that require electricity to flush,” Haff said. “That is not within my jurisdiction, and Pine Mountain Lake was taking care of that. They ordered port-a-potties that came in later in the day. But until that time they had to turn people away, because there was only one port-a-potty.”
Haff said she understood that Tesla drivers were lined up to charge their vehicles in Groveland starting at 6 a.m. Sunday morning until power was restored later that afternoon.
“That charging station requires lots of voltage, so I’m not sure when they were able to charge again,” Haff said. “So, as you can tell, I was not there physically, because I am not in the county, but I was there to make sure that there was follow through to get the Resilience Center open, and I definitely interfaced with the businesses in downtown. I also called several people who live in the Groveland area to find out if their power was on or off.”