Over 7,000 PG&E customers in Sonoma, Napa counties without power

Nearly 7,700 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers in Sonoma and Napa counties were without power Wednesday morning. Service had been restored to at least 530 customers in Sonoma County as of 1:45 p.m.

Outages affecting about 1,400 customers were unplanned and unrelated to the planned outages triggered by the red flag warning in effect through Thursday. These unplanned outages affected residents in northeast Sonoma County, northwest Napa County and parts of Napa, according to PG&E spokeswoman Megan McFarland.

Nine of the outages in Sonoma County were due to high winds, McFarland said. One outage was triggered when a tree fell and destroyed a line, while another began after a wire fell from a line.

“Outages occurred last night into the early hours of this morning, with the peak of the outages occurring around 7 a.m.,” McFarland told The Press Democrat on Wednesday.

Power was lost to approximately 530 customers around Windsor and Healdsburg around 12:30 p.m. and was restored before 1:30 p.m

In Napa County, about 700 customers in the Carneros area lost power around 6:30 a.m. A PG&E crew was on scene working to identify damaged sections of the electrical system.

As of 10:30 a.m., estimated restoration times are not available for the outages affecting residents in St. Helena and along the Sonoma-Napa border.

More than 6,300 other customers in Sonoma and Napa counties also had their power shut off by PG&E due to critical fire conditions. These intentional power outages began Tuesday evening and could last into Thursday, McFarland said.

According to the National Weather Service, a red flag warning is in effect for the North Bay, excluding the coast, until 7 a.m. Thursday due to forecast offshore wind gusts of up to 40 mph, low humidity and dry vegetation.

Reach Staff Writer Madison Smalstig at [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @madi.smals.