At the end of the market street. Should we have an active shooter situation, we want to get out and hide out and take out. So with that, we envision going about 30 or 35 minutes. Our lineup will close on my right whos Vice President of the community wildfires safety program. Well have an update from our meteorologist. Live look at the News Conference. Well be starting there, giving a lineup of what they are expected to talk about during the 30 minutes. Once the News Conference starts well bring it to you. Do you want to go back now . Is it starting no . Well move on for the moment. Pg e says theer outages is the weather. We have a team of weather experts monitoring the conditions including our drew tuma and our spencer christian. Dry gusty winds are intensifying at this hour. Lets go back to the map to give you current wind gusts around the bay area. You can see winds are quite strong. Up to about 20 Miles Per Hour, fairfield 29 Miles Per Hour and santa rosa at 20 at halfmoon bay. Winds are stronger at Higher Elevation right now. Gusts at 32 Miles Per Hour and 28 Miles Per Hour, mountain diablo. Theyll helicopter continue to r in the evening hours. We expect the strongest wind gusts arrangement to 35 to 65 Miles Per Hour under these conditions with of course very low relative community and fire could start and spread. Wind advisory remains in effect until 3 00 p. M. Tomorrow. Down and power lines. Inhe late night hours, notice how much stronger the winds become and how much more widespread these strong gusts will become. Well see it peaking from midnight to 4 00 a. M. Stronger gusts in the high elevations and late in the afternoon, well see the winds tapering off a little bit as conditions normalized. I will go back to dan and and holly right now. Lets get to the News Conference. The state is facing, we are fundamentally redesigning and hardening our system that we discussed yesterday in terms of targeted undergrounding, significant increase vegetation and around our over head assets and conducting and with our Technology Using drones. High jerresolution imagery. We are fully staffed. We have weather stations and High Definition cameras and all of this is providing us the situation and warning us the sb intelligence in regards o f the Weather Forecast and the subsequent risk that the community is facing in regards to potential wildfires. With that, i am going to request our meteorologist scott trenfield to provide us update. Thank you, essentially we continue to track and has been tracking the last week of what well be calling a diablo wind storm. It will be inside slider, a classic set up for what we know as diablo winds across Northern California and as that system moves south, thursday into friday, it is going to produce some santa anna winds. This is a total california wildfire weather events. There is going to be multiple phases that meteorologists continue to track this. We have nofrt winrth winds and either side of the valley. We saw portions of redding in that area, wind gusts of 50 Miles Per Hour. One thing i want to go back and say about diablo and santa anna wind events, these are histrically, the events that cause the most destructive wildfires in california history. We are seeing some of the same conditions thats going to develop in this event. We have seen in previous offshore diablo and santa anna wind event. It is a serious me the meteorologists and forecast agencies are aligned of this. This is a highrisk event. If you dont know there is a National Weather service has issued widespread warnings across most of Northern California. Red flag warnings are in effect as well as southern california. What i am showing on the screen are Predictive Services northen operations also has this as a high risk event and it is indicating there is a high risk of significant fire. Our pg e meteorologist is looking at similar condition as well. We are expecting the weather event totality to subside on friday. It start to get out of the south half of our territory and well be monitoring more than 600 weather stations to give the all clear to our crews to patrol every inch of our assets to determine if there is damage or not so we can reenergize. Thats in a nutshell and ill turn it back to you. Thank you, scott. Lets move to a situation update in regards to the Operational Action that we have been taken as a result of this potential at risk that scott talked about. The first phase of o wacoleted 500,000 customers in sierra foothills and in the north bay area experienced we have identified in the interest of Public Safety to minimize the impact of destruction to our customers, we have identified limited areas where we could safely energized sections by reconfigu reconfiguring our electrical system. Our system was not in a high fire threat area. As a result we have been able to bring service back to patr approximately 44,000 of the 500,000 customers. Additionally because of wind gusts have reduced in the northwest portion of the sierra foothills, we are working on determining if we can bring service back to one of our transmission lines thats a supply of the humble area. If we are to perform safely on the transmission line to assess every inch and determine if there is any potential damage that occurs and see to repair the damage. Well be able to bring service back to another approximately 60 to 80,000 customers this evening if we are able to do that work safely. The second phase of our shutout offs started around 3 00 p. M. It is ongoing. We are continuing to monitor weather in the east bay, south bay and santa cruz areas. Well be making a decision about the timing later this evening because what change from the discussion we had yesterday is there is a shift and the timing o the weather pattern. We may be able to delay the start time of that. Additionally there were some questions about the impact of some of our mass transit infrastructure yesterday regarding the tunnel. We were able to provide backup generation. Thats currently in place serving the tunnel. That will should not be impacted as a result of this. In addition to that, we were also able to mitigate the impact to the halfmoon bay area. We were able to reconfigure the electric supply of that tunnel and mitigate the i am ampact. We provided backup generation of two of our bart stations. In total the second phase of the shut offs impact 250,000 customers. We anticipate the peak and early tomorrow morning and forecast the weather subsiding around noon tomorrow. It could be subject to change. Finally the third phase that impacts our Current County regards to the area. The scope of that phase have been reduced significantly. Yesterday we communicated our 6,000 customers have been impact td. That number have been reduced. The impact currently estimating down to 4600 customers. We are in the process of notifying those specific customers. Some of our customers experience a power shut offs even though weather condition in their area is not extreme. The reason it happens because of the interconnected nature of the electrical system where the power lines Work Together to provide electricity across our cities and counties and we are abl stin supplies to some of our customers. Lets turn to whats ahead. Once the weather event passes, we can begin to perform inspection of every inch of our impact distribution and transmission infrastructure. We have 45 helicopters that are ready to fly and begin with visual safety and inspections have 6300 on the ground personnel and ready for inspection and restoration for our well only know that as we start the safetycod take efrl days se fully restore power. We can only perform the visual safety inspections during daily hours. Our crews are working safely and as quickly as possible to get the power restored. Well continue of the ongoing communication and engagement with all of our customers, local agencies and state agencies and cities and counties throughout the process so that everyone has the most up to date information. With that, i would like to request four chief customer officer, lloyd, to come up here to share some thoughts and insights on what we are doing to maintain the and our we have been dealing with outages and customers trying to find information about outages. I have good news. We have established a separate website, additional website and alternate do you want me to start over . First of all, i would like to show our sincere appreciation to our customers for their patience and certainly during this outage but especially as they have been trying to interact with us on our web pages and getting information on our outages and how it is affecting them at their residence. I have good news. We have established a new website that well be sharing through our social channels after this press conference. That new website will enable customers to see the maps of where the outages are occurring, theyll be able to put their addresses in and search their addresses. Theyll get information about where they can meet with us. We have al new website we are setting up. Well have that website in effect to the duration of this event and thatll be the source of information for customers to check on outages in their area, community and as well as Additional Information about their specific home and location. On the channel well post information about our customer resource center. We have 28 Resource Centers. They open up at 8 00 a. M. We have additional five that well be opening up tomorrow morning for a total of 33 Customer Resource Centers that well provide water, resources for customers to talk to our employees to get information as well as restrooms and facilities and cooling centers or Heating Centers as necessary and theyll have the ability to come in and charge their devices. Those will be posted on this new website. Again, i want you know be very clear that we have experienced intermitten outages and we know it has been difficult for our customers and we made it available and prioritize those customers who are calling into our call centers. We have am new website that well be posting and has Maximum Capacity so our customers will be able to interact with us and receive the information thats most important for them. And i woul all right. Thank you, laurie. I want to reiterate our sincere apologies for the impact of not having the pg e. Com website available. We understand and appreciate the patient patience of our customers and communities. We want to thank our media outlet customers because many of you in the room have been helpful being able to provide critical information that ouro obtain from pg e. Com. We thank you for your best interest and continued interest. Within final comment i would like to address before we take questions. The safety of our employees and our contractors as well as our customers and communities, our primary responsibility, are employees and contractors are working hard to ensure our system continues to operate safely. The power line will be restored quickly after the weather passes. We realize and understand the impact and the hardship as a result of this decision that we have made but our request of our Community Members and our customers is to ensure our employees and contractors ha, t have families that live in your communities, theyre members of your communities. Lets ensure their safety as well as they are doing this work in the intereststhat, lets get so we can get into the q a question. Well take it one at a time. We need microphone sos people on the phone can hear you. I appreciate that. Well run microphones to each one of you. I believe this gentleman wants one. We have a phone line dialled in. We have like 150 people dialled in on the phone line. Thanks for the update. I am interested in the timeline, you are talking about delays in phase two. City of san jose was talking about 8 00 p. M. , can you talk about the latest on that. Thank you for that question. In terms of delays, our teams currently and Emergency Operation centers are continuing to work with our meteorologists in regards to the updates to the forecast and initially we were going to proceed at noon today for phase two but we have seen that the weather pattern has shifted to later this even ing and well be making the decision here the next hour. We have to anticipate that well start that sequence by 8 00 to 10 00 p. M. Time frame. If we see the weather pattern continue to shift, well do our level best to minimize that impact to our customers and communities in that area. Even though we are seeing the weather pattern shifts on the the start time. We are anticipating that the weather is going to subside as noon tomorrow again being in the forecast and the fact that it changes to earlier and later, well provide updates accordingly. The governor says this is an outrage that we are paying years of mismanagement to the hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be in the dark tonight. At do you say they are suffering for your mistake . I appreciate that question and that sentiment. The sentiments have been out there in terms of the impact we have. I cant talk about the mistake of the past. When we look at the climate and environment which we live and operate operate and breathe in, it is dynamic. That environment has changed drastically over the last several years given the Drought Conditions and the amount of deceased trees and vegetations. Thats right and ready to be a strong fuel source for potential wildfires. The environment that coexists have completely changed from my perspective and the way that we need to maintain our assets and instruct them, thats also changing and thats what we are doing as part of you had a market for this year, correct . Yes. We completed we are on track to completing our 150 miles this what steps are you taking to do that much more quickly thats the key reason you are doing this because you cant trust your own equipment at this point, correct . We are not necessarily saying that we cant trust our q i co equipment. The factor of safety that existed in the environment naturally when the Electrical Systems were compromised does not exist anymore. Thats the factor of safety that we are looking to get from our own infrastructure. We are actively and we have all handson deck approach to be able to get all qualified just this year, we did the enhancement inspections which is unprecedented, we did an 1 18month of work in a fourmonth time frame. We are doing everything we can. Nearly doubled the amount of vegetation and clearing vegetation and around electrical and over head system that we have now. We have more than 5,000 individuals focusing on that effort. We appreciate the question. You got three in a row. Well come back to you. Well come back to you. We are also getting a lot of frustrated viewers if this is going to be the new normal. We have a lot of frustrated viewers if this is going to be the new normal. What prevent this from happening again in two weeks or months. Is this something people should be prepared for periodic blackouts for days or weeks at a time going forward. What to stop this from happening. Thank you so much for that question. Thats whats on top of our mind and this is exactly the things that we are trying to do so that we reduce the duration and the frequency of the Public Safety power shut off power event because we know the impact it has to our customers and communities itself. Given the amount of risk and especially of this time period and high wind conditions. We have seen it. We saw it last year and we saw it in october of 2017. This is three years in a row. And just like we are here in the seismic rt of the dealing with wildfires is the new abnormal of california. We all have to Work Together to find the right solution set. Our focus is to continue to work on our infrastructure so we reduce the amount of time so we have to do theubli safety power shut off and the potential duration and the impact. Pg e updating the media and answering some questions including some from our reporter. We continue to monitor and cover what comes out of this News Conference. One of the big things was they set up the new website so people can go and check their exact home address. Which was such a disaster yesterday as people rushed to that website to get information and it was not working. We have it on our website. We have it for you as well. Lets talk about our weather and the situation there. The winds is why all of this happening and the dry conditions. Drew tuma is watching that closely. Things are changing critically for the next few hours hours we begin to see the winds ramp up and thatll continue through the evening. The winds right now are gusting to 32 in mount diablo. Winds not only reaching parts of the bay area near the surface but it is dragging some bone dry air. Look at the wind in santa rosa. It is 3 . It does not get much dryer than that. These winds are drying out the atmosphere as we speak. That combination not only the winds but the low humidity. Relatively humidity continues unfortunately to lower over night tonight. First thing tomorrow morning, we are talking about humidity levels in the teens, across much of the bay area. You combine the humidity and the strengthening winds right now and the accomodaticombination ge fire danger. Very high to extreme and that threat even continues by 4 00 a. M. And stretching only into the east bay hills. Part of the range of a high fire danger. Timeline of the forecast in a few minutes. Drew, thank you so much. Download our abc7 news app. Keep track of our weather conditions. You can customize the app for the locations you are interested in. The app is also how we are sending out push alerts to the latest information. We send this alert. On the bottom of your screen you are watching a running list of schools that are closed as well as Resource Centers that is are opened blow a kiss, into the sun we need someone to lean on blow a kiss, into the sun all we need is somebody to lean on. All right, across the bay area, we have live teecam fro chris nguyen is in the south bay. It has been a day out here in the north bay. It is stillhi rsectionllay we control chaos. Thats about the best way we can describe it. There has been ten accidents today at intersections. Ten accidents we were told in the first 14 hours of this shutdown. All intersections and all because of this shutdown. What we hear and what we heard from that press conference, there is not a lot of relief insight. Reporter in Sonoma County, pg e says 600,000 still without power. In eastern santa rosa, the outages have taken a toll at the baskin robin store, don nisnyde and his wife had to clear gallons of ice cream and using only a battery. Now theyre in a battle for i dot tosay. It isosting me a lot of moving pai point a to point b have proven to be a challenge. More accidents than usual in attempt of the veterans center. Well, i have to have oxygen to sleep. We found him topping off battery for a medical unit inside a pg e research center. With this outage possibly lasting days. Hes not in a good mood. Pg e should have taken care e of this the last 50 years, we would not have this e come back live at highway 12. Frankly at times looks more like a giant game of chickens than an orderly intersection. It has not been any kind of an accident here all day. Based on that press conference and what we are seeing here, brace yourselves. This is not going to be a sprint. It is going to be a marathon. Wayne freedman, live, abc7 news. Wayne, thank you. The east bay is expected to lose power at noon today. The shut off was delayed. Liz is joining us live. Liz, the damage has already been done. Delayed again, we heard in that press conference and may it be at 8 00 p. M. Or 10 00 p. M. It could be later. So much in limbo here in the east bay. We are at lafayette right now. Kind of business as usual, cars running by and people have been walking by. This is where you see the impact. Today. Ses after businesses they put these signs up closed to the pg e shut offs. They could have stayed open had they known the power would still be on tonight. Another day of loss business and employees could not come to work today to get their paychecks. A lot of uncertainty right now. People did come for parody and went to the Hardware Store earlier today. Usually they see about 250 customers on a good day, yesterday they saw 500. Did you have any flashlights left . No. We went to a point where we were selling Outdoor Solar lights. They got all the refrigerator ice packs that we had and they got kacandles. Every candles we had and over there we practically sold out of our ice chest and even our very expensive ice chest. How much did that cost . Like 300. People came prepared. This is a crew working through the night to install generators. This is what has been able to keep that tunnel opened. There was fears it would not be able to stay open because it runs off power because they were installing generators in the tunnel will remain open for the next several days as long as it is necessarily and these outages continue. Those generators will work. Back out here live in lafayette. This intersection here on mount dab l diablo had the power stoplight. They were not working today. That was the preemptive measure. You see a flashing red light, it may not be because the power is out and preemptive measure by the police. Keep an eye out for that. We are waiting to see what happens tonight. Live here in lafayette. Abc7 news. Good evening, while we were e at the village at oakland hill. People had been stopping us consistently and air their frustration. Many are saying i cant repeat on television, you can imagine this is probably the most polite thing that you will read about pg e anywhere in the bay area today. I guess i have to thank pg e. I feel like i am living in limbo. Other than that, this has got to make a little better. This business selling gelato preparing the only way they can by giving away their ice cream before it all melts. A sweet distraction but with no answer. Is power going to be shut off . My mom is 75 and didnt know whether her toilets is going to work. Does this mean you are not mad at pg e . Reporter with the fire alert in the area still high, many had no choice but to power through their preparations. Thats 15 of crushed ice. Saves about 100 worth of food at least. I am glad we have a Beautiful Day and getting less optimism in this deli where all this meat and produce could go bad. Eric kim with the possibility of losing 7,000 in inventory. I dont have like a big you know so i lose a lot of customers, too. Reporter at the open zoo, no business either. They had to close shops to make sure their endangered animalspro these frogs cant take a moment without electricity. They are prepared to go for several days but it makes you nervous. We plant for some of these and yet at the same time you know as complicated as it is and unnerving for staff as we go through this process. All rig reporter a little bit of light hearted. We were to first to air of this free gelato. Many of our viewers watching the 4 00 rush over. This is the busiest store on this street. They are almost out of ice cream and people are waiting anxiously for the power to go out. Chris reyes. Morgan hill has the curfew. Abc7 news chris nguyen continues. Erarge hes live in san jose tonight. Reporter we spoke to the San Jose Police chief this afternoon. They added more staffing tonight because of the outage, the same goes for the fire department. As we await the start of the pg e power outage, a last minute trip for some in san jose, to stock up on the essentials. Right now i am going to go to costco to get some gast for my car because i am near empty. Others in denial of the alert before reality set in. At first i didnt want to believe it oh, things are going to get shut off. It does not happen until you start seeing everybody around and you kind of panic. You cant help but going and follow what everybody else is doing. Reporter the city and the county declared a state of emergency hoping to free up Additional Resources if necessary. In our county alone. People involved of 38,250 customers of whom 1100 of what they call medical baseline customers. Really encourage if people could get home to do so. It is going to be a long slow l fourway stop for everybody. Reporter Staff Members spent the day canvassing paeast of sa jose. There is digital gaps of this community. We are making it last old fashion outreach to folks who are not online and just making sure they are safe. A last minute push to alert neighbors in english and spanish and vietnamese. Try to stay home and try not to get out there. It is not going to be the safest place for you be. Reporter the city has already posted these signs at four major intersections in the outage zone asking drivers to be alert ahead of tonights commute. Residents in the south bay trying to anticipate what to come. We have can goods at home and water. I think well try to do as best as we can. Reporter there are multiple Resource Centers set up throughout the bay area for which are here in san jose. We posted that Information Online at our website on abc7 w abc7news. C abc7news. Com. I am chris nguyen, abc7 news. We are told the company has some explaining to do. We dig into newly released documents from federal courts of its equipment starting the fire. Why is pg e at at t we believe in access. The opportunity for everyone to explore a digital world. Connecting with the things that matter most. And because nothing keeps us more connected than the internet. Weve created access from at t california households with at least one resident who receives snap or ssi benefits. May qualify for Home Internet at a discounted rate of 10 a month. No commi, oron f visit att. Com accessnow, to learn mo officials are asking tonight are these pg e blackouts necessary or could they have been more targeted to areas where the risk is the highest. Dan noyes found from court today. Reporter workers failed to identify dead gray pine tree for removal a month later that fell into the power line sparking a fire. Three months before inspector s was not repaired in time. It is near the origin of last years deadly campfire. Pg e right now should not have confidence in the safety of its equipment because it is proven to fail. Reporter Public PolicySteve Weissmann told me about one fundamental law. Pg e gets a budget for operation and maintenance of the power each year. It gets to keep that money and share it with its shareholders. Reporter most of the power grid is uninsulated and could spark when comes in contact with dry trees. Pg e was supposed to insulated wires. Pg e have said they started this but really where theyre a and what the plan is. Reporter state lawmakers have questions about pg e pulling a massive black out this week. This is a true tragedy. This is not something we can take lightly. Senator squor jerry hill is draa letter today degetting others t signed. Well make sure that the public find the root cause of that was dan david is joining us on the west side. Reporter we have winners an reporter lucky for these customers, they could stock up on food and get them through the power outage. Kim torres detecting a high level of anxiety. Everone is overwhelmed and everyone is in a panic mode right now which i have never seen here before. Reporter as they waited to lose their electricity, some are critical of pg es power shutdown plan. It is more likely to start a fire than maintaining the reporter janice mccc her employees home. A hang up for hightech bi theyre doing the best they can. Theyre reacting a terrible situation last year and a lot of people are really angry at pg e but i mean whats their choice . Reporter as the hours tipped away and residents continue to deal with how to deal with medication ths that need to be refrigera refrigerated. I keep my refrigerator closed and i get what i can manage. My mom is up there and she only has a cell phone. I have no way to get a hold of here nc orhe dies. Reporter as you saw the top of our 6 00 news, pg e is in the process of reevaluating as to when it is going to shut off power in san mateo county. We are live on woodside, david louie. Abc7 news. San francisco is the only bay area county not affected by this Power Outages. The counties that are impacted of the entire county is in the dark. Abc7 news, leanne melendez brings you the story from sausito. Words travel fast and many residents left without power at homemade their way to the store. Reporter everyone is buying ice. They got to be safe and sure because who knows what well be ahead for whether it is five whatever. Reporter it was a different outcome for customers at target in near by marin city. The store did not have generators so one by one people returned away. I have a flight tonight. I kind of needed to get some stuff. Reporter medicines scheduled to be delivered were not accepted. I cant get it because theyre closed. Reporter moms andeftn the dark. Most gas stations were closed. Years ago the city invested in generators. When there is Power Outages we encouraged people to come to city hall to charge their devices. Reporter it can always be worse. It is run by electricity so theres no showering and flushing the toilets so it is extra fun. Live here in sausilito. This is a 600 kilowatt generator. It is really loud. The average u. S. Homey about 30 kilowatts a day. Again, live , leanne melendez. Pg e has had problems throughout the has had no questions about pg e Power Outages like why is pg e really doing this. Pg e has said from the beginning that nothing has been done on fire safety. I got on the phone, he told me he could not spent for pg e. Here is the back story i am also hearing. Pg e bankruptcy could be threatening if there are large fire caps to be made. The utility is trying to protect the process by cropping the possibility of a fire. Will it last forever . Probably not. If a nce program has been and bankruptcy goes in we expect you know when youre at ross and your new fall look you know when youre at rossthats yes for less. Ook score a headtotoe look youll love and save 20 to 60 percent off Department Store prices. At ross. Yes for less. And you get first dibs on that brand. At that price . Thats yes for less. Seriously, get the fall brands and styles you love and save 20 to 60 off Department Store prices. At ross. Seriously, get the fall brands yes for less. U love join us tonight for abc7 news at 11 00. No a no business. The pg e powthu s o taking its Sonoma County tonight. As anger a atsunrostminga fa friends of utility workers. All that tonight. We appreciate your time. Our entire come try my really big chicken sandwich combo with two patties for 4. 99, or three for 5. 99, or four for 6. 99. Thathey, thanks, stanley. 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