The sweltering heat triggered a number of power outages around the Bay Area this week.
The South Bay has been hit the hardest and after four nights of outages, the city of Morgan Hill is demanding answers.
Mobile stop signs near intersections were still out Friday. They were put there by police when traffic signals went down over the last four days as temperatures hovered in the 90s or 100s.
Some neighborhoods lost power all four times.
“I assumed it was random, but how come it’s our neighborhood every time?” said Doglas Wright of Morgan Hill.
He said he had his grandkids visiting this week but they haven’t slept because they’re constantly sweating with no AC due to the blackouts.
“I feel a little abused,” he said. “After the second night it was just redundant. You can’t sleep. You’ve got all the windows in your house open. There’s just no relief.”
His neighbor chose to sleep on the tile floor because it was cooler, and finally gave up and spent last night at a friend’s place.
“It’s been pretty miserable, honestly, every evening the power has been out. No AC,” said Javier Magallanes of Morgan Hill.
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Wednesday was the largest outage affecting 19,000 homes and businesses.
City leaders are asking PG&E why Morgan Hill is so impacted.
“We noticed within the first two days of the outages that Morgan Hill had a much higher percentage of our community out than the overall county did, and we immediately brought that to PG&E’s attention,” said Chris Ghione, Morgan Hill Public Service director.
PG&E said that the unprecedented heat wave is to blame.
There were three separate outages Wednesday due to underground cable failing at a substation.
The other nights, other equipment, like transformers, failed due to days and nights of constant heat.
The utility said it now has a team of engineers reviewing the Morgan Hill energy system to see what can be done to prevent this from happening again.
“There needs to be some upgrades to the infrastructure here in Morgan Hill,” said Ghione. “We can tell that and that’s what we’ve been demanding from PG&E.”
Residents are just hoping the lights stay on Friday.
“Uncalled for. It really sucked for anyone here in Morgan Hill, and I feel like it’s been unfair,” said Magallanes.
