Hundreds across the Bay Area still without power since Sunday's storm

LAGUNITAS, Calif. - Pacific Gas and Electric is continuing to grapple with pockets of outages across the Bay Area from this weekend's powerful storm. In Marin County, around 960 customers are still without power.

"I think the hardest part is that we really don’t know when the power is going to come back. We don’t have hot water," said Susan Steiner of Lagunitas, who has been without power since Sunday. On Thursday, crews finally began the work of removing a massive tree that came down across her road and knocked out electricity the neighborhood.

Most customers said they were understanding about the backlog created by the storm, but frustrated with PG&E over what they described as a lack of communication. 

"Yeah definitely, the communication could be improved for sure, said Tim Grimmer of Lagunitas. "Like I just got a message today that there was a power outage, and that wasn’t very much of an update."

Grimmer said he was relying on a small back-up generator at home, "but nothing that is going to back up the fridge, and the freezer, and that kind of stuff."

So Grimmer says he's been making multiple trips to the store for ice, and learning how to cook fast in order to minimize food waste.

Up the road in Nicasio, Brian Dolcini, who owns Clover Dairy, has also been without power since Sunday. He pointed to the area over the hill where the utility poles came down. The winds that day, "they clocked it at 102 from across the dam," said Dolcini.

He was inside his metal barn at the time, and he said the winds still blew him around.  His brother's roof was partially ripped off amid the storm. 

"He’s tarped, but the inside of the house, he's gotta get new sheet rock and stuff like that, new floors," said Dolcini.

Back at the farm, Dolcini's generator is still going strong, so the cows are getting milked, but the power to his main house remains off.

"Dead, so you build a fire in the fireplace and kind of sleep on the couch next to the fireplace," said Dolcini.

As for when he’s expecting the lights to come back on, "they’re telling me maybe tomorrow we’ll be back on," Dolcini laughed with his fingers crossed. 

PG&E said, in terms of outages, the damage from this weekend’s storm was the third worst it has ever responded to.

Dolcini said the contractors brought in by PG&E to fix his outage came all the way from Minnesota and Montana.