PG&E electricians were out in force in the Richmond District near 24th Avenue to restore power to more than 14,000 households still without it as of Sunday at 2 p.m., more than 24 hours after the blackout on Saturday morning.
Restaurants and businesses shuttered on one of the busiest weekends of the year, and the Star of the Sea Church was forced to host its mass by candlelight on Sunday morning after the citywide blackout left a vast swath of the Richmond still without electricity.
Fiorella, an Italian restaurant on Irving Street in the Inner Sunset, lost power in the middle of lunch service around 1 p.m. on Saturday. Its sister location on Clement Street is still closed due to the outage.
The restaurant had to cancel its dinner service on Saturday evening, as the promised restoration time kept changing, from 5, to 5:30, to 6:15 p.m., said the manager Daniella Schindler.
“It was already getting dark, and I can’t have people working in the dark,” Schindler said. She remembered joking to her employees, “If you were to cut your fingers behind the bar, I won’t even be able to see it.”
“It was supposed to be one of our busiest nights,” she said. The restaurant had dinner reservations for 182 people on Saturday night and, on top of that, Schindler expected 100 or so walk-ins. The restaurant might have lost about $18,000 to $20,000 in transactions, she said.
“It was difficult,” Schindler said. “Lots of reservations are families visiting here for the holidays. I have to cancel them, because there’s nothing I can do.”
Initially, the citywide blackout affected 125,000 households, primarily on the west side of the city and near Haight Ashbury and Civic Center.
At Anza Street and 25th Avenue, a dozen PG&E workers worked Sunday to put generators to use, and provide at least temporary power for customers, a crew member said. In the meantime, they are working on a permanent fix.
“It’s like slow cooking,” the worker said. “But we are getting closer to the end. The power should be back shortly.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Connie Chan said on Sunday afternoon that power was expected to return fully by 2 p.m. on Monday. A community resource center would open at the Richmond Recreation Center, from 5 to 10 p.m., where residents could charge devices, access Wi-Fi and get water, snacks and ice.
Lurie said those without power currently should not expect it before Monday. He said residents could call 211 for a free hotel stay from PG&E.
In the Richmond, traffic lights on stretches of the busy Geary Boulevard were dark. The Chevron gas station on 25th Avenue was closed, with yellow tape wrapped around its four gas pumps.
Traffic was still bustling in major corridors like Geary, however. Muni trains are turning back at Church or Castro stations, not heading into the tunnel. Waymo yesterday cut service to all its autonomous vehicles across the city after videos showed dozens of them stalling in intersections and jamming up traffic.
Restaurants that are usually bustling with brunch crowds remain closed, often with a handwritten sign on the door blaming the blackout.
On one block, residents opened their garage doors, where a solar power panel or generator led indoors with their cables. A teenage boy in a yellow jersey, seemingly bored, kicked a soccer ball at his front door.
Sunday mass at Star of the Sea Church was still on, but with no power. Candlelight illuminated the interior.
“We can have mass without light, we just have to be careful with candles,” said Carlos Lopez, a clergyman at the church. “But the food is getting bad in the fridge.”
“We need to plan, because we didn’t expect it,” he continued. “It is frustrating in a way, we can’t provide services as we’d like, especially for elderly people.”
On 24th Avenue, Vanessa, holding her 8-month-old baby, was on her way to pick up some food for a tenant in her building. Yesterday, she had heard about the power outage before getting back to the city around 6 p.m., so she made sure to eat dinner before returning.
“We haven’t checked [the fridge]. We are too scared to open it,” she said, gesturing to the baby. “The breastmilk for her is in it, too.”
City officials advised keeping refrigerators and freezers closed as much as possible to keep the cool air in.
Ronald, a senior who has lived on Sixth Avenue for more than 50 years, said a blackout like this rarely happens to his home, which is located just one block from the Richmond police station.
When there were outages, he said, they only lasted for 30 minutes or so. But it’s “unusual” that there’s no estimate when the power will be back on.
What did he do last night? “Sit in the dark,” he said. “My wife is wheelchair-bound, we can’t go anywhere.”
Do not give up, Everybody! HOLD PG&E ACCOUNTABLE!!!!
Power just returned in our house 5 minutes ago, 7 hours earlier than expected!!! This massive electricity outage has perhaps reminded us of how critically important the basic city infrastructure is affecting our life as San Franciscans.
While it sucks the blackout led me to cancel rare social plans, I’m grateful my electricity stayed on through this.
I can’t imagine how angry I’d be at PG&E if I lost potentially $20,000 in revenue, my baby’s food spoiled, or if I depended on electrical medical equipment to stay alive.
Some people are still without electricity and Waymo’s cars are already back on the roads?! Despite a MAJOR design flaw of becoming inoperable when traffic lights go out?
2025 feels like a senseless Gilded Dark Age sometimes. At least I have my cat to snuggle with in my urban unheated trailer home.
Still not fixed at 6pm the next day.
“The Average PG&E Utility Bill Has Gone Up Nearly 70% Since 2020” -KQED.
They want to force-electrify all buildings before upgrading infrastructure,
and they’re going to raise their rates again in March, after 6 times this year.
No wonder they have so many millions to waste on advertising itself despite being a literal monopoly It’s insane that this is quo in a “world class” city.