Results tagged “pge”

A batch of natural gas coming down a Pacific Northwest pipeline was mistakenly produced with too much odorant -- the stuff called mercaptan that smells like sulfur that they add to the usually odorless gas so that you can detect a leak. This means a great many people in the easterly Bay Area may turn on their gas stoves to an especially yucky smell for the next day or so, and PG&E will be getting a whole shitload of calls from paranoid people who get a whiff and think there's a problem. The smelly gas has already set off odor alarms at PG&E's own compressor stations. An official from the company says the smell should dissipate after today and that not all customers will smell it because multiple pipelines feed gas to the area.

Get out those water wings, kids! The worst of the rain is expected to fall today between, um, right now (7 a.m.) and 7 p.m. tonight, and there's a wind advisory in effect until 11 a.m., at which point the gusts of 60 to 70 m.p.h. should subside and leave us with just mildly unbearable wind and rain through tomorrow. The 280-101 connection at 6th Streetis closed due to flooding. PG&E is already out there fixing power lines, Pacifica is bracing for wind damage, and Santa Cruz is bracing for mudslides in recently burned areas.

Last night in San Francisco's notoriously gay Castro neighborhood, 2,8000 were rewarded with forgiving, soft candlelight after a power outage hit the area for about an hour or so. The cause of the outage? A Mylar balloon. According to reports, "PG&E spokesman Andrew Souvall said the outage happened around 7:50 p.m. when a Mylar balloon hit electric wires." What's more, "[t]he incident caused a manhole cover to dislodge at Market Street and Duboce Avenue." [insert manhole/Castro joke here] Power was restored to the area around 9 p.m.

We received an alert from the handy AlertSF.org (where were you, Emergency_In_SF?!) that there was another underground fire that occurred several hours ago in the Civic Center area, on Polk Street between Grove and McAllister, which has been closed to traffic. PG&E might need to cut power while authorities investigate. The air reportedly smelled like burned plastic, but there was no visible smoke. A hot dog vendor at Civic Center Plaza reported seeing smoke coming from a manhole, but he didn't hear an explosion.

A power outage brought the world as we know it to a halt today in the SOMA / LORI neighborhood, most egregiously affecting SFIst HQ. (Damn you to hell again, PG&E.) From what we can tell, power along Third Street from Townsend up to Harrison is sans electricity as of 1:15 p.m.. For those of you who need electricity and a wireless connection in the hood, we recommend going to Epicenter Cafe at 764 Harrison, between Third and Fourth streets. They have wifi, power, passersby AND great coffee. UPDATE: Power had been restored. Please leaved 21 Amendment and South Park, and return to your offices at once.

With the second major underground fire in four years roaring last Friday -- spectacularly so, we might add -- Mayor Gavin Newsom wants some answers from PG&E. If you recall, in August 2005, an underground PG&E vault blaze occurred in the Financial District, critically injuring a passerby. That fire, according to CBS 5, "was caused by high levels of moisture in the oil inside the high-voltage chambers on the transformer." A follow-up investigation reveals that five additional transformers within in San Francisco "had high moisture levels" as well. Anyway, Newsom claims to be unhinged by last week's manhole blaze, saying. "I've been at this a lot as mayor of San Francisco, some more problematic events, not just this event. We'll work through them." PG&E promises a thorough investigation. Polk Street at O'Farrell remains closed for investigation.

Tomorrow at noon, in front of of PG&E’s headquarters at 77 Beale, Yes on H activists will install three gargantuan wind turbines. Fun! The makeshift wind turbines will stand 12-feet tall. Stop by if you're in the hood or eating at Beale Street to, like, you know, stick it to the man. (SFBG) UPDATE: Um. Oops. Our mistake: this happened today, 10/29. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Current San Francisco Mayor, possible future Governor of California, and still-lost-inside-Siebel's-sugar-walls honeymooner Gavin Newsom is throwing some sort of party at the Denver Democratic National Convention. It's cloyingly called Unconventional 08, molded for "generation Obama" (good grief), and rumor is there will be enough hookers and blow for everyone. (We expect a full report on the shwag grab from Paul Hogarth the moment it ends!)

Oh my, word. Did you hear it? We received a few emails mentioning it, but NBC 11 confirms:

A PG&E plant in the process of being torn down collapsed and killed a worker and injured two others today. Earlier this afternoon in an abandoned Pacific Gas and Electric Co. power plant in Bayview-Hunter's Point, workers who had been hired by the utility leviathan to remove the large boiler "had tied cables to the boiler, but it collapsed prematurely, raining debris down upon the workers." The five-story-tall walls of the power plant caved in, killing one and trapping two for over an hour. According to the Gate: