Thousands of PG&E customers in San Joaquin County affected by power outages unrelated to safety shutoffs - CBS Sacramento
/ CBS Sacramento
Widespread power outage hits San Joaquin County, unrelated to safety shutoffs
TRACY — Tens of thousands of PG&E customers in San Joaquin County were without power Thursday evening due to an unplanned power outage unrelated to the Public Safety Power Shutoffs across the state.
Just over 57,000 customers in San Joaquin County were affected by an unplanned outage, according to the company's online outage map as of 10:20 p.m.
The majority of the affected customers were in the cities of Tracy, Manteca, and Lathrop.
PG&E said crews began "de-energizing" some customers in the county around 4:30 p.m. to rebalance the grid. This outage is not related to the Public Safety Power Shutoffs impacting the county and others across California through this weekend.
PG&E said the outage was expected to last around 90 to 120 minutes, but the outage continued well into the night for tens of thousands of customers.
People like Leonel Cabrera in Manteca were at home around 3 p.m. when his power turned off suddenly.
"I found out it's not the house, it's the whole city," Cabrera said.
As the sun went down, the streets stayed dark. Busy intersections were without street signals.
"On my way here, there was almost a crash at the stoplight because everybody was just flabbergasted at the stoplight," Cabrera said.
Richard Ramos is a web producer for CBS Sacramento who was born and raised in Sacramento. He graduated with a BA in Journalism from CSUS.
