Eager to learn why, and curious about how to cope, several dozen locals attended a Pacific Gas and Electric Company open house in Chico Wednesday evening, days after the company preemptively cut power, due to extreme wildfire risk.
The company is holding similar forums throughout its service area through July.
PG&E’s Dave Meier, flanked by large Butte and Glenn County maps, had the unenviable task of showing which areas are most likely to lose electricity.
“We tell everyone to be prepared, it could come, so if you’re a little bit on this edge, the device we use may be 500 yards inside that line.” Meier said.
The man he was talking to, Kenneth Kelly, was weighing buying a generator.
Company representatives talked about personal safety around lines and other equipment, which areas are most prone to planned blackouts, notification and stressing the importance of having a plan. Asked for an estimate of how many such outages will occur this fire season, a company rep said it was unknowable.
That didn’t sit well with several people, including Bruce McLean of Chico who called it disturbing.
“I don’t have a generator, I live in an apartment," McLean said. "Even if you have an ice chest, you can keep your food for a while, but if it’s several days you’d probably end up throwing away the food, and that’s what I asked one of them, I said who’s going to pay for the food I have to throw away now.”
Leasa Davis, who works at an assisted living facility said her workplace is prepared to go two or three days without power. She’s concerned an outage could last longer than that, and that some preparations may be overlooked.
“We have electric gates to enter and exit the parking lot," Davis said. "Now, if the power goes out and we have codes or a keypad to go in and out, I was just concerned about how we would get in and out of those gates.”
For the disabled with medical problems, like Brenda Pickern a loss of electricity could be catastrophic. She uses a wheelchair and depends on oxygen and other devices and has no vehicle. She said the root problem is the company’s structure as a regulated monopoly, rather than a publicly owned entity.
“They need to make a plan to do something right for a change," Pickern explained. "They’re not doing right now, they’re just looking out for the bottom dollar, they need to look out for the Californians they keep screwing over.”
PG&E will hold another forum, this evening, in Chester at the Veterans Memorial Hall on Gay Street beginning at 6.