Thousands lose power in Berkeley Hills due to warning alert

Thousands of people in the Berkeley Hills lost power for part of Wednesday afternoon as strong, dry winds increased the risk of wildfires across the region.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. reported that 4,659 customers lost power due to an unplanned outage that began shortly before 1 p.m. and affected higher elevations in North Berkeley Hills and Kensington. Service was restored to all of these customers by 4:45 p.m

The utility earlier Wednesday shut off power to unpopulated parts of the hills east of Berkeley to ensure its equipment wouldn't start a wildfire, amid a strong offshore wind event that prompted forecasters to issue a red flag warning for the city this week. Only a dozen customers were affected by this preventative outage, which the company calls a “public safety power shutdown.”

Utility spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian wrote in an email that the major outage was not directly related to the intentional power shutdown but was caused by the same windy conditions.

Red flag warning conditions caused by offshore winds allowing wildfires to spread quickly are expected to last through Thursday morning.

Approximately 22,000 customers across PG&E's service territory lost power as a result of the preventive power shutoff, including approximately 2,400 in Alameda County, although these figures do not take into account the unplanned outage in North Berkeley.