Another power outage hits Berkeley during latest storm

Residents in Berkeley are reporting yet another power outage just days after thousands of community members lost power in another big storm.

Power outage reports began coming in to The Berkeley Scanner just after 11:30 p.m. Saturday as wind and rain picked up around the city.

Readers reported outages at McGee Avenue and Channing Way as well as Grant Street and Dwight Way. A resident in central Berkeley, near Sacramento Street and Dwight, said that area had also lost power.

"Power has been out in Poets’ Corner for about 10 minutes now," one reader told The Scanner at 11:42 p.m.

Local photographer Ariel Nava reported on Twitter that the "North Berkeley Hills are shaking with violent gusts of wind. Waiting for power to get knocked out again."

Hazardous condition reports began coming into Berkeley's emergency dispatch center at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday. They included a low-hanging cable line at 10th and Delaware streets.

The PG&E outage map did not show any Berkeley power outages as of publication time.

But, as of 11:59 p.m., the map had been updated to indicate that about 1,700 PG&E customers in central, South and West Berkeley were without power.

A second power outage in the northeast corner of Berkeley, and across the border in Kensington, was affecting another 1,100 PG&E customers.

Northeast Berkeley around Spruce Street was one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the city during the power outage earlier this week. It was one of the last areas to get power back after most other neighborhoods had their electricity restored.

PG&E noted, on the outage map, that both outages appeared to have been caused by the weather based on a preliminary assessment.

No estimated restoration time was listed but PG&E crews were en route to assess the situation, according to the outage map as of about 12:10 a.m. Sunday.

Until a week or so ago, the PG&E outage map included information about the total number of customers in each city and county that were without power.

Those numbers disappeared inexplicably earlier this week; PG&E has not responded to a request for an explanation.

The Berkeley Scanner will continue to monitor the situation closely.

Update, 4:45 a.m. The central Berkeley outage ended just before 3:25 a.m., according to a text from PG&E. The northeast Berkeley outage is still in effect, according to the outage map. No restoration time is currently listed.

Update, 9:40 a.m. The outage in northeast Berkeley and Kensington ended shortly before 9:30 a.m., according to PG&E.

Update, 4 p.m. A community member advised The Scanner that the northeast Berkeley outage actually affected nearly 2,000 PG&E customers around Spruce Street, according to the outage map. That was much larger than the original size of the outage reported by PG&E and continues to raise concerns about the accuracy of the map.

This story has been updated repeatedly due to the developing nature of events.