Nearly 40,000 still without power in Bay Area; most schools reopen for in-person classes

Crews sent by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company continued working throughout the day Thursday to reduce the torrent of Bay Area power losses, caused by a howling windstorm earlier in the week that left the utility with its most outages in a single day since 1995.

The utility said it began the day with fewer than 100,000 Bay Area customers still without power after Tuesday’s storm; by the noon update, that number had been cut to 37,365. The powerful storm, with gusts up to 97 miles per hour, had knocked out electricity service to some 367,000 customers at its peak Tuesday, damaging at least 217 power poles and 157 transformers, according to the utility.

The majority of the customers without power as of noon Thursday were the 21,868 in the South Bay; another 10,768 were without service on the Peninsula and 4,495 in the East Bay. Most of the service restorations that could be noted Tuesday morning were in the East Bay and on the Peninsula.

As of noon Thursday, the PG&E outage map appeared to show that the biggest outages affected the Santa Cruz Mountains, Campbell, Saratoga, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Redwood City, San Mateo and San Ramon.

Most schools that had closed due to power outages were announced to reopen for in-person classes Thursday, with the exception of  Cupertino’s De Anza College, which said online classes will continue but may be affected by loss of power.