I'm sending this email at 7:28pm on Wednesday, August 9th. In what feels like a terrible case of deja vu, a large swath of Menlo Park, primarily in District 3, is currently without power. See PG&E outages map below.
City staff have connected with PG&E and learned that the power outage is affecting almost 1200 customers in Menlo Park due to a downed tree affecting PG&E power lines near Middlefield Rd and Oak Grove. Traffic signals are also out in the area. PG&E vegetation crew is on site (please stay away and allow them to do their work). They will first remove vegetation before assessing and beginning repairs. Menlo Park Police is responding and Public Works will be deploying stop signs at intersections with signal outages.
The outage map is currently showing a computer generated restoration time of 4am tomorrow morning. I am very much hoping this time will be earlier. I know how frustrating this is (my own home is currently without power) and how it brings back bad memories of the winter storms and outages. The "good" news is that this is a one-off incident, and PG&E isn't simultaneously working through terrible weather and other nearby communities also without power.
For those of you who are thinking, "It's a beautiful evening, it isn't even windy, how could this happen?," please see an info item posted just two days ago(!) on the Menlo Park website titled, "Sudden Tree Limb Drop."
