Update: Highway 101 in Menlo Park reopens as PG&E works to restore power
MENLO PARK – A stretch of Highway 101 in Menlo Park that was closed for several hours Thursday has reopened, as PG&E works on restoring electricity to Peninsula neighborhoods that have been without power for days.
Upwards of 60,000 PG&E customers in San Mateo County have been affected by the outages caused by high winds earlier this week, making San Mateo the hardest hit county in the Bay Area.
Shortly after 2 p.m., officials closed the freeway between Willow and Marsh roads, forcing many drivers to take alternate routes. Around 4:50 p.m., the southbound direction of the freeway reopened, with the northbound direction opening several minutes later.
According to PG&E, the utility asked Caltrans to close the roadway due to what they call a "challenging situation" in restoring power to thousands of customers. Several Peninsula communities, including Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, Belle Haven and North Fair Oaks are affected.
"Fallen trees have caused damage to our powerlines (sic), and it will not be possible to restore power without temporarily stopping traffic on nearby Highway 101," PG&E said on Twitter.
The lengthy outage has caught the attention of local lawmakers, who complained to the utility about the pace of restoring power.
"They should be able to move faster. Students in East Palo Alto are missing 2 days of school," said State Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park). "My staff has made many calls over to them, and spoken to so many more residents w/o heat right now (including my house!) We must do better."
According to East Palo Alto Vice Mayor Antonio Lopez, some households in the city have been without power since 1 p.m. Tuesday.
PG&E has expressed optimism that power could be restored by 10 p.m. Thursday night, according to Becker, but some are still in the dark for now.
Lopez and Becker also chastised the utility for not properly communicating about the ongoing outages.
"Many of our residents have called into the city asking us, 'when's the power going to turn on?'," Lopez said in a virtual media briefing Thursday afternoon.
"They go to the PG&E (website) and depending on where you live it could be anywhere from today at 3 p.m., 11 p.m. tonight, 11 p.m. the next day," he said. "So for us on the ground, it's hard to find a rhyme or reason as to when and how the power will be back on."
Lopez and Becker noted that many residents without power have medical conditions or equipment that require electricity or are without hot water.
The county is also expected to see low overnight temperatures fall well into the 30s. Given that, the two officials said it is imperative residents have their power restored as soon as possible.
Becker added that the county faced flooding and power issues less than two months ago during the storms that battered the Bay Area throughout most of January.
"I know there are crews that are working really hard, and I'm not here to criticize the people that are working 24/7 to try to fix this ... but sometimes it feels like our infrastructure is more 1923 than 2023 and it just doesn't feel acceptable that we should have to go through this," he said.
PG&E has brought in 20 additional crews to the peninsula in an effort to repair downed power lines, clear fallen trees and hasten power restoration throughout San Mateo County.
According to PG&E, current power line repairs and replacement is further complicated by snow in low-lying areas across the Bay Area that is breaking trees that don't often receive snow.
"When that happens, the tree can fall into a power line and take it down to the ground and also damage the poles," said Jan Nimick, PG&E's vice president of power generation. "So often repairs are complex because there's a lot of heavy damage to our equipment, and the repairs can also be complicated by access issues."
In an update Thursday afternoon, PG&E said the culprit involved a downed tree along the highway that caused damage to a power line. Crews removed the fallen tree and replaced the wire.
According to the utility, PG&E looks to finish removing the tree and replacing the wire by 6 p.m. Thursday, but were able to reopen lanes by shortly after 5 p.m. PG&E said additional work would be needed before power is restored to affected customers.
On Thursday afternoon, city officials in Menlo Park urged residents who were still without power to take advantage of a program offering one night-hotel stays. Impacted residents are being urged to call the City Manager's Office at 650-330-6610 or visit the Belle Haven Branch Library before 8 p.m.
Residents can also email their request before 8 p.m., including "Request for power outage hotel stay" in the subject line. Contact information and proof of residency is required.
The PG&E outage map can be found at the utility's online outage center.
Information from San Mateo County about this week's storms, cold weather and wind events can be found at the county website.
