About 20,000 PG&E customers enter third day of outage, expected to end Tuesday

About 20,000 PG&E customers remained without electricity throughout Northern California early Tuesday morning, two days after the utility company shut off power to nearly 60,000 as a wildfire precaution.

UPDATE: 6,000 still without power Wednesday evening, PG&E says

High winds contributed to the planned outage, which started Sunday and affected power in six counties.

PG&E tweeted a chart at about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday showing a total of 20,278 planned shutoffs remaining in El Dorado, Calaveras, Amador, Napa and Lake counties. El Dorado County had more than one-third of that total with 7,069, and Amador County had 5,617 outages still in place.

By 6 a.m. Tuesday, PG&E’s online outage map estimated 15,477 customers were still shut off.

Placer County Sheriff’s Office tweeted at about 8:55 a.m. saying power had been restored to nearly all of Alta-Dutch Flat, but that 1,370 residents were still awaiting restoration. The Sheriff’s Office said PG&E estimated a completion of 3:30 p.m. for those remaining outages.

In a tweet late Monday night, the utility said it expects to restore all customers by Tuesday, but did not estimate a specific time for full restoration.

Most regions show service being estimated to return by midafternoon, according to the online outage map.

Sacramento area PG&E spokeswoman Brandi Merlo said Monday that the shutoff could continue in some areas into Tuesday depending on weather. Merlo said each foot of line must be visually inspected before it can be turned back on, and that more than 2,100 miles of distribution lines had been “de-energized.”

Cal Fire authorities in June said PG&E’s power lines and failed power poles were to blame for large, deadly wildfires in wine country, Yuba County and the Sacramento Valley last October.

This story was originally published October 16, 2018 at 7:03 AM with the headline "About 20,000 PG&E customers enter third day of outage, expected to end Tuesday."