Thousands without power in Monterey County

MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION) UPDATED 1/27/21 5:40 p.m. Thousands of customers are without power Wednesday night as a major winter storm passes through the Central Coast.

The weather is causing downed trees and taking down power lines. PG&E crews are out working to assess and repair the weather-related outages. City crews are also cleaning up debris on the roads.

Here are the latest outage totals across the Central Coast from PG&E as of 5:00 p.m.:

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY:
Brookdale: 2
Santa Cruz: 50
TOTAL: 52
 
MONTEREY COUNTY:
Big Sur: 12
Carmel: 2,590
Carmel Valley: 4
Chualar: 11
King City: 36
Marina: 15
Monterey: 46
Pebble Peach: 564
Salinas: 402
Seaside: 35
Watsonville: 18
TOTAL: 3,733
 
SAN BENITO COUNTY:
Hollister: 5
Paicines: 65
TOTAL: 70

Several businesses along Ocean Avenue in Carmel-by-the-Sea lost power during the storm.

Some shops chose to shutdown and others, like Dametra Cafe, were left in the dark as they waited to see if power would be restored.

They’re not alone; 9,568 customers face outages in Monterey County Wednesday morning. KION found some traffic signals that were down in Salinas.

For businesses, this brings another blow after an already difficult year with coronavirus restrictions.

“We’re talking about shutting down most of the restaurants for the past few weeks so we had to only work for takeout, which has affect the business a lot,” said Nadeem Dawahreh with Dametra Cafe.

Some restrictions on businesses were lifted this week, which brought the return of outdoor dining. While managers we spoke with say this change will help on the weekends, weather like this doesn’t make it easy.

“It’s still very hard with this weather–the city should help us more to find a better way, better solutions to make the businesses survive,”Dawahreh said.

PG&E says they hope to restore some customers by late Wednesday afternoon or in the evening, but some areas will take longer that are difficult to access.

“In areas where we’re seeing a lot of challenges due to trees blocking roads or other access issues, we’re trying to restore power as quickly as possible so we’ll have a restoration time once crews are able to enter, assess the damage, complete repairs,” PG&E Spokesperson Mayra Tostado said.

PG&E says crews are taking advantage of breaks in the weather to get out to more remote areas to assess the damage.

PG&E is stressing to residents, if you come across a downed power line, don’t touch it as they can be dangerous. Call 911 immediately and then report it to PG&E at 1-800-743-5000.

Click here to view PG&E's interactive outage map and estimated restoration times: https://m.pge.com/#outages.

UPDATE 1/27/2021 8:25 a.m. PG&E reports that thousands of customers are still without power in Monterey County, but some of the outages have been reduced.

These are the updated numbers for some of the largest outages:

• 2,101 customers near Carmel Valley
• 1,987 customers near downtown Carmel
• Scattered outages near Monterey
• 83 customers near Chualar
• 1,749 customers in Salinas
• 157 customers near Moss Landing

PREVIOUS STORY: PG&E reports that thousands of people are without power in Monterey County.

The majority of outages reported are on the peninsula and in Carmel Valley, but there are others scattered throughout the county.

These are the largest outages reported:

• 2,605 customers near Carmel Valley
• 3,735 customers near Carmel-by-the-Sea
• 2,912 customers near Monterey
• 202 customers near Chualar
• 157 customers near Moss Landing

PG&E reports that the outages were caused by weather conditions, and the utility did not release an estimated time of restoration.