Residents in the areas affected by the utility’s public safety power shutoffs are no strangers to fire danger. People in Napa County prepared for what they say has become routine.
“Yes, Pope Valley Garage is the first AAA contract on the West Coast of California,” explains Jeff Paraday, who runs a little piece of California history.
His garage has been around for about as long as the car, but not without some trepidation.
“The power line went down,” he said of a 2015 incident. “The guardrail was charging, lighting up both sides of the road. The fire came from the back of the garage and burned this hill. Saved the forge, Patrick on his own with his water cart.”
Now the power is about to go out again when a strong wind comes, posing a major fire risk.
“It’s not convenient,” he says. ‘But we’re used to it. And anyone who has lived here for any length of time is certainly prepared for that.”
“To prepare for this, we’re running these two freezers with generators and then filling them with as much ice as we can so we don’t lose any of it,” Jeremy Wood said. ‘That’s always fun. And this generator here, this big old bad boy, we just keep it running.”
Wood runs the Pope Valley Market, which also has a game plan in place.
“Extension cords, plug them in and make sure everything is on,” he laughed. “Then a lot of fuel.”
“So yeah, it’s starting to get a bit routine,” said a man pumping gas into a tank for his generator in Angwin.
PG&E says it’s trying to make this less routine and less inconvenient by becoming more precise about where the power is turned off, with a system that is less vulnerable than in 2017.
“More and more checks,” a spokesperson said on Thursday. “We’ve strengthened our system in a number of different ways. We’ve done a number of projects to strengthen the system. We’ve really revamped the reporting process for public safety customer power shutoffs.”
“The 2020 fire affected everyone locally,” Paraday said.
Ask the locals about the power loss and that is often the answer. It measures a few days of discomfort against the region’s recent history of disasters.
“Over the last few years, since the fires in 2017, everyone in this area has been evacuated five times in a four-year period,” Wood explained. “Twice in 2020, and once a year after that.”
“At the end of the day, it’s for everyone’s safety and we just have to deal with it,” Paraday said. “It’s a way of life.”
These closures may change course. The most recent planned outage, about two weeks ago, was stopped just as they were supposed to turn off the lights.
Starting Thursday, the lights in this part of Napa County will be off until 4 p.m. on Sundays.
Wilson Walker
