Transmission power has been restored to the Chester substation and about 1000 customers in town are without power, but 600 now have power back on.  Crews are now repairing distribution lines damaged to bring power back on to other Chester customers.

A spokesman from PG&E, Paul Moreno, who represents the areas of Plumas and Lassen and other counties in the northeast corner of California was candid about the lack of power in the area.

Moreno commented, “10,000 homes were without power on Thursday in Plumas County, and today, that number is down to 6600. In areas where we can reach transmission lines we have repaired them, and we have ordered additional snow cats as well. Crews from Oregon and Washington are working in the valley areas, freeing up more crews to work in the Lake Almanor and Greenville areas.”

Crews are continually finding additional damage to distribution lines. With such deep snow in the mountains, even the snow cats are having issues, trees continue to topple over from the extra weight, and repairmen wearing shoeshoes are sinking up to their waists in the snow. While some customers should be prepared to be out of power through Saturday, others could be restored during the day, depending on when different transmission lines are brought back online. Additional transmission lines are expected to be restored by 6 p.m. today.

There are many substation level outages.

In the electrical circuit that serves downtown Chester, a transmission line was down affecting 1664 customers. NOTE: Some areas of Chester had power restored just after 10 a.m. Friday.

Two circuits are down powering the 2,497 homes run from the Big Meadows Substation. One of those circuits has 1,263 customers including homes in Greenville, parts of Lake Almanor and some in Westwood. The other down circuit includes 1,234 homes on Peninsula Drive and Lake Almanor.

Three circuits are down at the Hamilton Branch substation serving 2,324 homes, including the areas of Hamilton Branch, the Lake Almanor Peninsula, along the north shore of Lake Almanor on Hwy. 147 to Dyer Drive, and Hwy. 147 north to Clear Creek.

320 customers are out of power in the Bucks Lake area as well.

Moreno recommends customers call 1-800-743-5000, follow the automated prompts, and then enter either their account number or the telephone number associated with that account to receive the estimated time of restoration.

The PG&E Electrical System Outage Map is not necessarily accurate, but can be used as a general reference. Call 888-743-4743 if you are out of power more than 48 hours.

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