State Utilities Panel Opens Hearing on S.F. Power Outage
The state Public Utilities Commission opened a formal hearing Thursday into the power outage that pulled the plug on electric service to more than 1 million residents of San Francisco and San Mateo County.
The commission told Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to provide a report on the incident no later than Jan. 6, covering the cause of the outage and what PG&E; will do to avoid future blackouts. The company will have to show whether it is complying with maintenance, inspection and replacement standards.
The power failed at 8:17 a.m. Dec. 8 when a work crew neglected to remove ground wires after completing a project at a San Mateo-area substation. The mistake tripped circuit breakers all over the region, cutting power in some cases for up to eight hours.
The death of a woman who was struck by a truck crossing an intersection with no signal lights was blamed on the outage, and thousands of people have filed claims with PG&E; for losses they say they suffered.
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