Thursday. Gusty winds 35 to 55 Miles Per Hour with very low humidity. Any fires that do develop will spread rapidly. We have a wind advisory f north andor easthe bay hills to diablo range. Downed trees anderesow p limes. Heres what you can do. Loss of power is possible. Make sure you charge yourav an kit ready and an Evacuation Route planned. Abc 7 News Reporter vic lee says generators have sold out. The power outage is why cal trans will close the tom lantos tunnel. That is one of the main entrances into San Mateo County. We have a report from abc 7 News Reporter vic . Reporter kristin, ill get to that story regarding the tunnel first. Let me tell you why im standing here in front of the pasta moon kiot tront. Reith starting at 8 00 will be where San Mateo County residents can come. There will be bottled water, portapotties there, get your electronics charged there and pg e will be here answering questions. Today has been a busy and disconcerting day for many residents in the county.
Customers in the bay area. We have life Team Coverage at the Pg E Emergency Operations Center and on the preparations being taken in the south bay. Our meteorologist is tracking the winds that are causing so much concern. We begin with greatly who is in lafayette where people are scrambling to get ready and stocking up on needed supplies. More than 40,000 customers in Contra Costa County alone will lose power tonight and that includes in lafayette where people have been rushing to places like this ace hardware to make sure they are prepared for the outage. Once ron got word pg e would shut off his power, he left work early and rushedto the sto up and he wasnt alone. Several pallets of water completely empty. People are getting ready because the stores are more crowded than ever. The Police Departments estimate 21,000 customers will go dark in the marinda area. Police departments sent notices to residents last night to prepare before pg e finalized its plans. Giving residence a heads up
Power shut off. How they plan to keep running safely. Schools are also shutting down, uc berkeley is among those shutting down. The scope of this power shut off is unprecedented but so are the catastrophic wildfires we have seen in recent years. Pg e is set to pull the plug on 800,000 homes and businesses starting just after midnight. It will begin to our north and then roll south across the bay area as the day progresses. More than 200,000 of those pg e customers are in the bay area. The outages are happening in eight of the nine bay area counties. Only San Francisco is exempt. People across the bay area are scrambling to get ready. Our Team Coverage begins with amberly at an open gas station where there were lines of cars waiting to fill up today. Reporter we are at a busy gas station on mountain boulevard in the oakland hills. The manager here tells me there have been lines all day. There are still people here filling up. Everywhere we went, people told us they did not want to take
See who would be out and when. This is the map. Im showing you San Francisco here, and the east bay. These are areas not yet affected. We dont expect San Francisco to be affected at all or the rest of San Francisco county. Thats the only county untouched by this event. Already parts of marin are being affected. If i click now on sausalito, the pink areas that you see on the map are the areas that already have outages. Heres one area in sausalito, when you click on that, you can see that about 3,700 people are affected there. The one issue with this map is it does not total the entire bay area. Its difficult to see how many people are out as one large number. You have to go through and pick and choose the areas. A moment ago we heard frances say parts of napa county have been affected. If you go up into the north bay, you can click and see what areas have been affected. I will click on the city of napa now. You can see there are a number of spots that are now out. Lets click this area,
And caltrans took action that will affect the morning commute. Giant generators were brought into the caldecott tunnel, a major traffic route to the east bay. Caltrans is using it to keep the tunnel lights and fans on or risk a traffic nightmare. The tunnels themselves have very large fans that circulate to make sure the exhaust from the cars are actually taken out of the tunnels. Caltrans first thought some of the four boers in the tunnel would have to be shut down but bringing in those generators may correct that problem. The tunnel on highway 1 near pacifico is also open this morning. There were concerns about that closing. Caltrans brought in more generators there. A double slide thousands of commuters use that slide on the kim attevo toast every day. Were talking about this because weather will be a big issue this morning but first lets check in with sal for look at the commute. You heard it. The caldecott title in the lantos tunnel will be open and that is good news. Right now we