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Nearly 3,500 Palo Alto Utilities customers in the Ventura, Barron Park and Charleston Meadow neighborhoods were hit with a power outage Friday night, lasting through early Saturday morning, following a downed power line in the area.
The outage started around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 22, due to power lines going down on La Donna Avenue in Barron Park. Troubleshooting continued past midnight, and repair crews worked through the early morning hours to restore power to the thousands of residents, said Palo Alto Utilities Communications Manager Catherine Elvert.
Power was restored to the bulk of the affected residents — about 3,000 customers — around 2 a.m. Saturday morning, and power was fully restored as of 6 a.m.
It’s unclear what caused the downed power lines, Elvert said. It’s possible that the recent stormy weather may have contributed, but she said she did not want to speculate.
Another power outage caused by lines dangling from poles between trees.
How quaint!
In addition to outages at residences, the power went out at several hotels including Dinah’s Garden and the Crown Plaza. I was staying on the sixth floor at the Crown Plaza and there was no way to get information about what was happening. The hotel phones were out and there was nothing on the net I could find using my phone. The hotel was full of international guests for a VMWARE conference who were very confused. Finally I called the Palo Alto Police non emergency line. The officer said that all of South PA was out and it would take five to six hours to fix. This was a reasonable response. When I asked what I should do, he said “stay put, you’ll be fine” and hung up. I felt like a child being patted on the head. I use a cane and the dark room was a serious hazard for me even with the light from my phone. The wonderful staff at the hotel then came around doing a safety check and assisted me to a safe location with emergency lighting. My point is that the cop should have asked if I was in a safe location and whether I needed real emergency assistance. A crappy showing from your local police. Does not speak well of Palo Alto as a friendly place for the business traveler.
“Unhappy Palo Alto guest”, you received an appropriate response from the non-emergency PAPD phone line. If you want someone to blame then you might start with your own hotel. Periodic power outages are a fact of modern life. Ask your hotel why they aren’t spending some of the hundreds of dollars per night, per room, they collect (along with thousands of dollars in conference fees) on backup generators.
About a week ago we had an article here extolling the virtue of electric water-heaters rather than gas. I mentioned power failures and was assured “the electricity in Palo Alto is out only about once a year for a few hours at most, so this is not really an issue.”
@ Unhappy Palo Alto Guest.
I don’t know if you will come back to read this, but if you do I can only say that I want to apologize to you for our embarrassingly bad power supply.
I know you are here visiting Silicon Valley expecting to see the high tech capital of the world. Unfortunately, you see our pathetically bad infrastructure.
I know, I wouldn’t believe it either.