PG&E Establishes Additional Base Camp to Support Mendocino Complex Fires; Receives Mutual Aid Crews

08/02/2018

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today established an additional operations base camp in Lakeport to support emergency response and restoration and repair efforts in response to the Mendocino Complex fires burning in Mendocino and Lake Counties. PG&E’s first priority is the safety of customers, employees, contractors and the communities it serves.

PG&E opened a base camp in Redding on July 30 to support some 750 employees, contractor personnel and mutual aid responders for its restoration and repair efforts for the Carr Fire in Shasta County.

The additional base camp gives the company a forward presence in impacted communities to improve the speed of response and restoration and allows effective coordination with first responders. It also provides lodging, showers and meals for over 500 employees, contractors and mutual aid personnel from other utility partners from across the nation. These personnel support first responders and local agencies and will repair damaged infrastructure and restore service when it is safe to do so.

With the extent of damage from the Carr Fire and Mendocino Complex Fires, PG&E requested mutual aid from sister energy companies in the region. Thus far, over 100 personnel from other companies have responded to the request for additional assistance:

Avista Corp (to Redding)
Clark Public Utilities (to Redding)
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (to Redding)
Imperial Irrigation District (to Lakeport)
Snohomish County PUD (to Lakeport)
Tillamook People’s Utility District (to Lakeport)
Liberty Utilities (to Lakeport)
San Diego Gas & Electric (to Lakeport)
Southern California Edison (to Lakeport)

PG&E’s Emergency Operations Center at its San Francisco headquarters and its Gas Emergency Center in San Ramon are continuing to support the company’s response efforts in both the Carr and Mendocino Complex fires. Additionally, PG&E’s new Wildfire Safety Operations Center is fully staffed and continues to monitor active fires as well as other potential fire threats and weather conditions across PG&E’s service area in real time.

“PG&E was proud to provide employees and equipment to support our utility partners in Florida and Puerto Rico after last year’s hurricanes. In turn, we are incredibly grateful for the mutual aid being provided by our sister utilities to help us deal with the new normal and the impacts of extreme weather events and wildfires, and to assist us with our repair and restoration efforts,” said Barry Anderson, PG&E vice president of Wildfire Resiliency and Emergency Management.

PG&E has a plan to deal with these situations and wants customers to be prepared and have plans, too. PG&E asks customers to take five minutes and update their contact info at www.pge.com/mywildfirealerts so they can be reached if necessary. To report a downed power line or a gas smell, customers should get to a safe place and call 911 or PG&E at 1-800-743-5000.

In March, PG&E launched its Community Wildfire Safety Program to implement additional precautionary measures intended to reduce the risk of wildfire threats and strengthen communities for the future. In addition to establishing its new Wildfire Safety Operations Center, PG&E:

Added more than 50 new weather stations – with a total of around 200 planned in 2018 – to provide improved awareness of fire danger conditions and better predict where a wildfire could occur.
Enhanced vegetation management in high fire-threat areas to meet new state vegetation and fire safety standards and create safe space between trees, limbs and power lines.
Alerted more than 570,000 homes and businesses served by electric lines in extreme-fire threat areas that PG&E may have to shut off power for public safety if extreme fire danger conditions occur, as a last resort.

About PG&E

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.