What Are Four Days Without Electric Grid Power Like?
It’s not pretty. First-person dispatch from Ukiah, CA, where PG&E turned off electricity from Saturday, Oct. 26 to Wednesday, Oct. 30 in an effort to prevent wildfires in the region.
By Suzanne Pletcher
When the power went out in Ukiah Saturday afternoon, most people thought they were prepared: Coolers packed with ice would keep food cold until it could be eaten, and some newly-purchased generators would power refrigerators and freezers or even whole houses and businesses for a few tense days.
Ukiah is a small town of 16,000 spread out along Highway 101 an hour north of Santa Rosa. It’s tucked into the west side of a deep green valley flanked by the Russian River. It’s where wine country meets redwoods, rednecks meet environmentalists, and agriculture abuts forests—flammable forests.
I live 30 minutes outside town in an off-grid solar home and, like everyone else, I thought Pacific Gas and Electric’s power outage that began Saturday afternoon to prevent wildfires would be short and uneventful. But the fact that our home was unaffected by the power shut-off served to deepen the shock of seeing what people endured in town.
Here’s my experience of how life changed for those dependent upon electricity after four days without it:
Monday
Already the town has been two days without electric grid power over the weekend. Instead of power restored on Monday and everything returning to normal as forecast, public radio station KZYX began hourly broadcasts powered by their generator. The news: Without electricity, the local college, school districts and most businesses were closed not only in Ukiah but in the entire county.
News reports discussed homes without heat, AT&T landline phone service disrupted, food thawing. I realized that all those students, workers and little kids were living in cold dark houses with no cookstove, TV, or power for laptops and phones—and no more than a handful of advertised public places to go that offered warmth and charging stations. The radio reported lines for gas were up to two hours long at the few stations that were open.
Tuesday 9 a.m.
Friends texted and posted on social media that stores were sold out of ice and batteries countywide. Generators were on back-order. A big generator behind the pizza parlor was reported sawed off its bolts and stolen.
11 a.m.
I headed to town for my usual Tuesday noon masters swim workout at Ukiah Valley Health Club. I hoped the air quality was ok for a workout in the outdoor pool. The sky was deep blue though smoky from the Kincade fire burning 40 miles to the south (PG&E didn’t “turn off” the line that caused it), and I decided to swim.
Noon
One of the owners of UVHC is a career PG&E engineer, and she parked an enormous generator out front. Cables snaked from the generator under duct tape through the front doors and around the counter to terminals that powered the pool heaters, hot tub, showers, lights, HVAC and fans. I couldn’t smell any emissions from the generator, which seemed remarkable.
The place was mobbed. Parents crowded the lobby area and outdoor pool cabanas, their kids scurrying through the melee and shouting to each other. Professionals whose businesses were shuttered and cold were perched on chairs, couches and ledges, engrossed in laptops and cellphones plugged into every available socket. College kids whose classes had been canceled pumped iron and crowded the hallways, sharing stories from the black-out. Day-use visitors seeking warmth, wifi, and a hot shower engulfed the front desk.
“People need a place to go that’s welcoming and healthy,” said Deni Lee, the part-owner and PG&E employee, from behind the front desk. “We’re happy to do it.” A sign in the hallway said, “Please be patient today. We’re all in this together, so be kind to one another!”
The shower room was packed. Most of the people waiting in line had not had a hot shower in several days, and they were taking their time. But once my turn came, the shower was hot as ever.
In the pool, we traded stories. Mike Cannon, the master’s swim instructor, said the indoor temperature at his house without heat was 54 degrees when he got up that morning. He has natural gas heat like many others, but it didn’t work without electricity. Cannon operates a popular pilates studio and said he wore a down jacket while treating his clients to a workout challenging enough to keep them warm.
Another swimmer said he moved into a new home in east Ukiah in September just in time for the first PG&E power shut-off, which blew the motors on the hot tub and two ceiling fans. This time around, the appliances were unplugged but he was evacuated because of the Burris fire burning nearby.
A third swimmer, a stocky former tech entrepreneur who owns a pottery studio and is an avid fisherman, said his stash of 30 pounds of salmon and rockfish was thawing and had to be eaten. So on Monday night he had gathered an impromptu group of friends at one friend’s unheated home for an impromptu candlelight dinner of barbecued fish tacos. Someone brought garden veges and another — a gourmet cook — made apple custard pie on her working gas cookstove. The crowd’s body heat slowly warmed up the house, the candlelight cheered them, and they ended up having a wonderful time.
A former Nationals swimmer said the new generator purchased by Ukiah Natural Foods grocery malfunctioned almost immediately. A repairman was brought in for the emergency and got it re-started, but shortly after the store closed for the night, it broke down again. By the time staff opened next morning, all the food in the freezer was unsafe to sell. Some of the wilted produce was given away to early patrons and employees; the rest had to be thrown out and the store closed.
Across the street from the natural foods store, the bread shelves at Safeway were bare by 11 a.m., the fisherman said. Someone said the local brewpub’s bar was open, but not the restaurant.
2 p.m.
After swimming, I drove a half-mile to the local Mendocino Transit Authority bus office where I work part-time as their communications consultant.
They had jerry-rigged their landline phones to work so that customers could call in, but the admin building had no lights or heat. No one was working inside except for two dispatchers in thick jackets. They told me that calls were light, and they worried that many of MTA’s elderly passengers had disabled landlines or portable phones and couldn’t call for help getting out of cold homes.
“What if they are using an electric wheelchair, which is the case for a lot of my customers,” said Jim Crowhurst, a Dial-A-Ride driver. “They can’t recharge the battery and, once it’s dead, they can’t go anywhere, not even to the front door.”
In the driver’s break room, boxes of food were spread out along with burgers and brats since many drivers could not cook food at home with either electric or gas stoves. The electric coffee pot was empty and the cause of some grousing.
Driver Miles Thornton told me the buses were almost empty. “There’s no place for people to go with most businesses and schools closed,” he said. Thornton said his bus could not provide service to the local Costco because the line of cars to the gas station there was all the way out to the highway intersection a mile away, and there was just no way for the bus to get through on a schedule.
Bill Baxter, driver of the regional bus to Santa Rosa, told me he could not provide bus service to the Charles M. Schultz Sonoma County Airport because it had been commandeered as an emergency services staging center for those fighting the Kincade fire. All commercial flights were canceled.
I asked the drivers for advice to passengers. Thornton drives the night bus and said that, without street lights, he can’t see people waiting at some of the stops. “Wave your cell-phone flashlight so I can see you,” he said.
“Be very careful when crossing the street in the big shopping area around Costco,” Dial-A-Ride driver John Martin warned pedestrians. “There are so many cars jockeying for position in that area—and no stoplights anywhere in town. It’s really dangerous.”
Outside at the picnic table in the warm sun, stout Operations Manager Jacob King’s sagged in his chair, his long beard drooping down his chest. California Office of Emergency Services had called early that morning and asked for emergency transport of dialysis patients: There was no generator at the Ukiah dialysis center, and it was closed. The situation for some patients—several now three days without dialysis—was critical. King commandeered extra buses and drove the first group of patients himself. “They were in bad shape, yellow and lethargic,” he said. He expected to transport more than 80 dialysis patients by Wednesday.
4 p.m.
Back at the health club while posting MTA passenger alerts on my laptop, I overheard one woman complaining to another about the “obnoxious and noxious” generator growling at the neighbor’s house day and night. Another explained to a friend that she knew air quality was bad but the house was so cold that she had built a roaring fire in the fireplace anyway.
A friend stopped by with better news: In early summer when the first news of possible power outages had surfaced, her husband had purchased a generator large enough to power their entire home and appliances. He had run extension cords from their generator to the neighbor’s house to keep their freezer and refrigerator running too.
Upstairs in a yoga room, a graphic designer with a prominent wine country clientele was working on her laptop. She was finishing up an assignment before heading back to her freezing dark office to meet her accountant and hand-write checks to vendors and employees.
5 p.m.
The radio stations that are the information lifeline for those living in this blacked-out city and county thanked me via email for bus service updates. They are broadcasting from back-up generators but one emailed that the batteries at their transmitter sites couldn’t last much longer. Another said new generators at the office and a transmission site went down and couldn’t be fixed during the crisis.
6:30 p.m.
The Inland Valley Women’s Choir stuck with their earlier plan to have a potluck song circle. They gathered with LED lanterns, popcorn and stew in the nave of the Center for Spiritual Living and sang songs of persistence, empowerment and hope.
Wednesday
The power came back on mid-afternoon in Ukiah. Schools and businesses announced they would re-open, and lines for gas dwindled. Friends gathered to share stories over food that had thawed and needed to be eaten. Life quickly returned to normal.
But no one here will ever forget how crazy was life in Ukiah, Calif., without electricity for four days. No one escaped the tension that blanketed the town along with the layer of smoke from nearby fires. It felt as if the air itself was charged with a dark electricity—though none of it was available through a single socket powered by the electric grid.
Suzanne Pletcher is a semi-retired public relations and communications professional working in Ukiah. She and her husband live in an off-grid, solar powered home west of town.