Politics & Government

Wednesday Evening Power Outage Impacted 3,300 Customers

Power went out at 8:34 p.m. and was restored at 8:56 p.m.

The high winds predicted by the National Weather Service arrived in Alameda Wednesday evening.

A reader submitted a picture of a tree down at High Street and Bayo Vista, and user reports on Alameda Patch's Facebook page indicated that power was out for customers in central Alameda for about twenty minutes just before 9 p.m.

"The outage effected about 3,300 customers," said Alameda Municipal Power's Bill Garvine. "I don’t know the exact perimeter yet, but I know I the outage went all the way to Park Street and then came in a northwestern direction to Union Street. I know on the east side the boundary was Clement, but I don't know the west side yet."

Find out what's happening in Alamedawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

According to commenters on Facebook, power was out near South Shore, along Willow, near Grand and Pacific, and in the 2700 block of Washington.

One noted that she saw arching from a transformer near Oak and San Jose, and another reported her power was out at Buena Vista and Willow. 

Find out what's happening in Alamedawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Garvine said the outage was caused by a tree branch that blew onto power lines at Encinal and Walnut. He said power was restored quickly because AMP has a night truck that is on duty until 11 p.m.

"A little later when he's at home or on a weekend when we have to call the guys up it takes a little longer," Garvine said. "We're glad he was here."

Garvine urged residents to be prepared for outages in windy weather. He said he had heard reports of downed trees on the East End, but could not confirm other outages. 

"In these kind of wind conditions people should have make sure to have emergency supplies, because it’s more likely that power service will be interrupted especially in a city that has so many trees," Garvine said. 

Feel free to add details about this or other outages in the comments. 

From an earlier report about the wind:

"It's not really what most people would consider a 'storm,'" a national weather forecaster said Tuesday morning, saying he expected gusts of 60 to 70 mph at higher elevations, with gusts of 40 to 45 mph in lower-lying areas like Alameda.

"It's going to be really blustery almost everywhere," he said, which can lead to downed power lines or tree branches falling on lines.

Alameda is serviced by  (call 510 748-3902 to report an outage), but PG&E, which serves much of the rest of the region, reports that 13 percent of its power outages are caused by tree limbs that fall onto power lines. Of those, 90 percent are caused by healthy tree branches.

More about Alameda Municipal Power here — and hold onto your hat. 

Take a wind-related photo? Choose "contribute" to add it to this article.

Bay City News Service contributed to this report. 


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