Update: Power restored to 900 SLO County customers, hundreds more without electricity
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More than 1,400 Atascadero customers lost electricity Tuesday morning due to a power outage.
Power went out around 10:43 a.m., according to PG&E’s outage map, affecting a total of 1,418 customers.
PG&E was able to restore power to more than 900 customers around 11:45 a.m., company spokesman Mark Mesesan wrote in an email to The Tribune.
About 500 customers remained without power as of early Tuesday afternoon.
Affected households were located mostly north of Highway 41 and south of Highway 46, west of Highway 101, according to PG&E.
Mesesan said that section is considered a high fire threat area.
Because of this threat, the circuit where the outage occurred has enhanced power line safety settings that shut off power in “one-tenth of a second when a fault is detected,” Mesesan wrote.
Mesesan told the Tribune that the outage was initially reported as a wire-down outage, but responding PG&E crews at the scene had not been able to find any issues with wires or other apparent causes as of early Tuesday afternoon.
He said crews were investigating to determine the cause of the outage. To do this, crews may patrol lines by helicopter, truck or foot to check for damage.
Once the circuit has been inspected for safety, PG&E crews will restore power as quickly as possible, Mesesan added.
Power is not expected to be restored until 4:45 p.m., according to the outage map.
