BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
East Palo Alto residents demanded an apology from PG&E officials last night (March 16) over the company’s failure to communicate during a 50-hour power outage that closed schools, spoiled refrigerated food and disrupted daily life.
“I probably should’ve started with that,” Aaron Johnson, vice president of PG&E’s Bay Area Region, said at the end of the meeting. “I do want to apologize … I heard a lot of pain, I heard a lot of grief, I heard a lot of impact to people … It’s been powerful.”
Residents told stories of people from 2 years old to 90 years old sitting in the cold and the dark, with no idea when the power would go back on.
One resident said the outage brought her back to when she was homeless as a child. Another resident said she felt dehumanized. “Are we a forgotten city?” asked Luisa Buada, the CEO of Ravenswood Family Health who said none of the communications from PG&E mentioned East Palo Alto.
Jenny Bloom, a board member for the Ravenswood City School District, said the superintendent and the board didn’t receive any calls from PG&E. Principals learned the power was out when they showed up to school at the beginning of the day, she said.
“That is disrespectful,” she said.
Kids rely on schools for their meals, yet PG&E made no effort to bring in back-up generators, she said.
“We need an apology, not just, ‘Oh, we need to do better,’” she said.
Johnson said the school district is his top priority and that updates go to the account manager, who is likely the facilities manager.
The subject of the meeting was the outages from Feb. 21 to Feb. 24, when Highway 101 had to be closed to facilitate a repair.
Some speakers said they wanted PG&E to prioritize restoring power in cities with fewer resources and more low-income residents, such as East Palo Alto.
But PG&E prioritizes the largest and longest outages, with an eye on critical facilities like hospitals and schools, Johnson said.
“We’re mostly operators and engineers looking at numbers,” he said, noting that Atherton was impacted too.
Resident Eve Sutton said she had a cold during the power outage and couldn’t take a hot bath or make hot soup, so she missed more days of work.
Johnson said that PG&E doesn’t give reimbursements if the outage is caused by “an act of God,” such as weather. But customers with outages longer than 48 hours will get an automatic credit on their bill of $25 to $100, he said.
Nadine Rodriguez said she spent $200 at Costco to replenish her fridge. Residents have filed claims for reimbursement only for PG&E to reject them, she said.
There was one group in the crowd that was particularly upset, yelling at Johnson and talked over other speakers despite Mayor Lisa Gauthier’s attempt to maintain order.
They went up to the podium as a group and grilled Johnson.
“So you’re telling us you have no solutions?” one of the women asked.
The grid will never be 100% reliable, Johnson responded.
“We can’t stop trees from falling down,” he said.
PG&E did trim over 1 million trees last year, he said.
City Manager Melvin Gaines eventually stopped the group because he said their comments were no longer productive.
He told them to call him, and one of them said he was a “token” black person.
“That’s disrespectful, because I worked hard for this position,” he said.